Mirrors of Truth
by Aria6
Summary: A fic focusing on Axl and his mysterious past. Why was he created, exactly? This fanfic is going to get extremely weird in future chapters. Enjoy!
1. Chapter 1

The problems started with mirrors.

Mirrors are very simple things. Based on the most elementary of principles, that light can be reflected, they allow us to see ourselves in merciless detail. The first mirrors had probably been nothing more than a particularly still piece of water, giving a caveman his first glimpse of his own hairy visage. Then would have come polished bronze mirrors, inferior in clarity to the water but far more portable. As time went on, mirrors were made of silver, steel, silvered steel, glass… every conceivable substance that would reflect has been used, at one time or another, as a mirror. Ranging from two mirrors positioned to create endless reflections, to the strangely shaped mirrors of a funhouse, mirrors could make interesting optical illusions. And in the modern age, mirrors are everywhere. From the restroom at the mall to the back of the bar to the fridge magnets, mirrors are there. Who could escape mirrors?

Axl certainly couldn't, but then, he'd never felt the need. He wasn't precisely vain about his looks, but certainly he wasn't the harshest thing ever to meet the ladies eyes. He had no self-consciousness about mirrors.

That only made the problems, when they began to happen, more peculiar. Mirrors are based on elementary physics.

So how could they lie?

But, perhaps we should begin our story with the first incident so you can judge for yourself…

Axl sighed, leaning against a pillar in the woman's clothing store. Bags and parcels were clustered around his feet like a bunch of tiny ducklings hiding beneath their mother's wings. Brightly colored, scanty clothing was on racks all through the store. Bright, pretty t-shirts and low cut jeans were the fashion this year. And right now, Marino was trying them all on.

"How does this look, Axl?" Axl didn't bother to look up at her. He was too busy watching the movements of a beetle making its way across the floor.

"Lovely." He said with a marked lack of enthusiasm. Marino glared at him. She was wearing a bright green tube top and tight jeans… not the sort of thing to usually get male indifference.

"You didn't even look!" She accused him, annoyed. Axl sighed.

"Marino, we've been here for three hours. Are we done yet?" Not three hours in this particular store, but three hours in the mall. Marino snorted and stalked back to her changing room, not deigning that with a reply. Axl morosely guessed that they would be in the mall for at least two more hours. Looking at Marino's new outfits, especially the bathing suits, had been fun for the first two hours. But after that it got old.

_It's__ times like this I wish I'd stayed with Red Alert, _Axl thought, _but no… that was just as sucky in a different way. _Sighing, he tried to find something to occupy himself.

_…?_ Axl suddenly glanced sharply to the left. He possessed excellent peripheral vision, as was only to be expected of a good Hunter. He had detected some unexpected movement.

But directly to his left, there was only a mirror, set into the wall. A sales rack was nearby, but no one was looking at it. The store didn't have many people in it at this time of day. But it had probably been a stray flutter in the breeze. Dismissing it from his mind, Axl looked away.

And twitched his head back for a second look. Something had _moved_. He looked around for a fly… it had been too high for a mouse. But he couldn't find a fly.

He turned his attention to the mirror, wondering if perhaps a bug had run across it. But it was a fine mirror, flawless, with nary an insect in sight. He raised a hand to scratch his hair in puzzlement… and froze, staring at the mirror.

_Oh, that can't be right. I'm imagining things!_ But ice crawled down his spine as he stared at his reflection. It had moved just a bit too slowly. His hand had been at his head just a moment before his reflection had followed, as if it was alive and trying to follow his movements but couldn't quite anticipate them…

He slowly waved his hand in front of the mirror, and there was no hesitation this time, to his relief. He was just imagining things. It was only a mirror.

It was still creepy, and he decided to find a better place to stand, where the mirror wouldn't be in plain view. He didn't need to watch himself, after all.

If he had noticed his reflection watching him just a moment too long, he would have been even more uneasy, and to no great purpose. So it was just as well he didn't notice.

If that had been the only incident, the phenomena would have been moderately annoying and hardly worth comment. Alas, it did not end there.

There are many myths about mirrors. Some people will hold forth that mirrors can give you a glimpse into other worlds, when the proper rituals are done over them. Such rituals often involve illegal drugs, leaving the validity of the myth in a great deal of question. In ancient days, mirrors were sometimes shunned because they were thought to split the soul. The trick with two mirrors to create multiple reflections was considered particularly unwise. It still isn't very popular, if only for reasons relating to nausea. Others in ancient times considered mirrors to be tools of arcane craft. What role they played was not specified, beyond helping the mage do his hair. But since they tended to break in odd ways, it was generally assumed they were for more than makeup.

What myth about mirrors is true? It's hard to say. And until mirrors started bothering him, Axl didn't care. But sometimes things creep up on you… without your noticing.

Axl was at a bar, pleasantly drunk. He'd gone on a mission with Zero earlier, and it had been a roaring success. Now he wanted to quietly unwind in the presence of some alcoholic beverages. Well… semi-alcoholic.

"Mmm, pina coladas…" Axl sipped at his milkshake mixed with rum, and sighed in pleasure. It was his third one so far, and the bartender had a heavy hand with the rum, so he was getting nicely sizzled in addition to full of sugar. It was a very pleasant combination.

The bar wasn't really very nice. It was a low dive in a bad part of town, with sticky floors to prove it. The lighting was dim, and there was enough cigarette smoke in the air to stun an ox. Axl loved it. Mostly because of the jukebox in the corner, which could always be counted on the blare out some classic rock. He also liked how he was treated. None of his former comrades at Red Alert would have been caught dead in this dive, so he didn't have to worry about being called a traitor or worse, and he was a novelty. As a Hunter, he always had a ready audience for his war stories and often the other patrons would buy him drinks. Not to mention the fact that the owner of the bar ran a side business selling ice cream during the day. This was the only bar he'd ever found that could make spiked milkshakes in twenty different flavors.

And speaking of which…

"Could I have a strawberry, please?" Axl said, pushing his empty glass towards the bartender who took it with a quick bob of his head.

"Sure thing." He scooped out some more ice cream, threw in the milk and rum, and blended it quickly, carefully wiping off the machine when he was done. He was fairly sure he'd be doing this at least twice more before Axl passed out or decided to leave. "There ya go."

"Thanks." Axl glanced up at the TV mounted in a corner of the ceiling as he sipped his drink. It was a nice, big TV and one of the main draws for the bar. Right now, though, the bar was almost empty and some science geek in the audience had requested the Discovery channel. Not that anyone really minded. It was a special on uncaught serial killers, which fit in with the general mood.

There was a large, wall-filling mirror behind the bartender. Axl wasn't sure why, but it was a common fixture in most bars. He rested his chin in his hand, and gazed fuzzily at his reflection in the mirror.

The reflection slowly yawned, then grinned at him. Axl blinked, then touched his face just to make sure he wasn't smiling. He wasn't.

But in his heavily buzzed state, this seemed more interesting then creepy. Axl grinned back, and waved. A few moments later, the reflection waved back.

"Holy shit man, how do you do that?" The bartender had caught most of it, and was staring at him, shaken.

"Do what?" Axl yawned… it seemed the mirrors yawn was catching.

"Make that thing grin at you like that. Man, don't do that again, it's creepy as all hell." The bartender started to polish some glasses, keeping a wary eye on the mirror. "Reminds me of a horror book I read."

"It's just a mirror." Axl said reasonably, and took a deep gulp of his drink. "Ah, strawberry… hmm?" The Axl in the mirror was pointing over his shoulder urgently. Axl turned around to see-

"Aw, damnit." Two Reploids had stepped into the bar. He only recognized one of them, but that one was one too many. "Lyos, you better be here for a drink." From the glare on his face, though, Axl didn't have much hope of that.

Lyos had been a member of Red Alert, before everything had come apart. He was a tall, golden armored Reploid with long red hair and golden, inhuman eyes. Large wings were folded neatly behind him, and even pissed off, he took care not to jar anyone with them.

A female Reploid was with him. She was much shorter, the top of her head barely reaching Lyos's chest. Her short black hair was naturally spiky, and she was wearing a red bandanna. Her skin was dead white, and her face looked almost wasted, like a cocaine addict on a serious bender. Black and red armor suited her very well, and she had two pistols holstered at her sides. Electric blue eyes regarded Axl curiously. He didn't recognize her, and she obviously had no clue who he was either.

Lyos was more than willing to solve that problem.

"Axl," he growled. "You little traitor! So this is where you've been hiding." Rage made his eyes glow, and from the looks of it, he had a serious rage going right now. Axl sighed, and took a deep gulp of his milkshake.

"No fighting in my favorite bar. Can't ruin the bar. You wanna take this outside?" Axl stood up, and discovered he was a little wobbly. Not good.

"Axl?" The girl asked, interested. "The one who broke up Red Alert?" She ran a hand down Lyos's arm, then frowned, looking over Axl's shoulder at something. She seemed disturbed.

"Yes, Rocco," Lyos growled. "That little scum…" He stepped closer to Axl, hands balled into fists. Apparently, his rage was too great to allow for using weapons, and that was fine by Axl. A fistfight could only damage so much. Lyos's sword and his gun could tear the bar apart.

But the girl intervened, gripping Lyos's arm tightly.

"Lyos, honey, I think maybe we should do this _some other time._" Her voice fell to a hiss on the final words, and Axl could see how she flexed her hand on Lyos's arm, digging in small claws. "A _better_ time."

"Rocco, you-!" Lyos started, furious, until she jerked him down and whispered something into his ear. Then he blinked and frowned, also looking over Axl's shoulder.

"…Fine." He finally growled, glaring at Axl. "Your stupid parlor trick won't save you next time, traitor." Rocco almost dragged him out, and Axl blinked as they left. Then he gripped the bar as the world wobbled a bit more. Or was that just him?

"Weird," he said muzzily. "What parlor trick? Uck…" He grabbed the barstool, taking a seat before the floor did something unfortunate to his feet. He was drunker than he'd thought, which made him glad they'd left. He wasn't sure he could take Lyos in his condition. "Couldn't have meant my DNA copying…" It would hardly have been much of an asset against Lyos right now. Copying didn't get rid of booze and his old partner knew it.

"I dunno." The bartender was just as mystified as Axl, but far more relieved. "I'm just glad he's gone. Want another rum shake?" Axl looked at the strawberry shake, and was a bit startled to see it was almost gone.

"Sure… how about chocolate? With chocolate liqueur?" That was expensive, but worth it, and the bartender nodded.

"Coming right up."


	2. Chapter 2

As time went on, the problems with mirrors continued. And, unfortunately, the mirrors didn't seem to care if anyone else was present.

"Axl?" X said quietly, arms crossed. He had his serious, "you-are-in-trouble-young-grasshopper" look on his face. At least, that was how Axl thought of it.

But the reason for it was a mystery. He'd gotten rid of a Maverick attacking a junkyard earlier that day, but there hadn't been any casualties or even that much property damage. It had been the kind of smooth operation that X grudgingly approved of.

"Yes, X?" Axl tilted his head, trying to look attentive and eager. X had finally folded on the issue of letting him into the Hunters, and Axl was trying to be the best of the best in his own way.

"Could you please stop doing that?" X said firmly, and Axl stared at him, baffled.

"…Sir?" He finally said, and X frowned, catching Axl's lack of understanding.

"Your reflection in the wall is looking at the back of your head," he stated factually. Axl whirled around to see… his reflection looking at him. But it hadn't moved with him turning around. It had been looking at him the whole time.

"Argh!" Axl reached up to yank on his hair, and the reflection did the same. "Maybe if the walls weren't reflective… I don't know what's doing this, X! It's weird!" It was also creepy, although one instance with Signas had been hilarious. Fortunately, Signas hadn't been able to see the rude gestures Axl's reflection had been making behind him. But it had been hard for Axl to keep a straight face. X frowned.

"Maybe this has something to do with your DNA copying ability." Axl brightened at the idea. It was farfetched, but at least it was something. "Have you been down to the repair bay about this?"

"No, X, I didn't think it was me." But his DNA copying ability wasn't perfectly understood… maybe this WAS him. Axl felt relieved at the thought. If his ability was at fault, maybe the problem could be fixed. X shook his head.

"Well, try to get down there. That's really very unnerving to watch." X walked away, and Axl glanced back at his reflection, and then nodded. He'd get down to the repair bay as soon as he had time.

Time wasn't easy to come by, though, and it turned out that the repair bay was busy with some earlier injuries. Axl would have to wait for two days, since his condition was just a nuisance… and some things attracted his attention before then.

"Isn't this fascinating, Zero?" X said enthusiastically. They were all seated in the break room, and Axl looked up curiously from his science fiction book. It was a slow day for Maverick activity, and a person could only train so long.

"Mmm, if you say so." Zero said noncommittally. Axl blinked, and looked up at the TV to see what X was interested in.

It was a news special on some kind of scientific discovery. Axl wasn't too surprised… he suspected that if it hadn't been for the Mavericks, X would be a scientist in his own right by now.

_He would certainly be happier._ Even when he was resigned to the necessity, battle never made X happy. Axl shrugged off the thought, and looked at the program.

"…So this tablet predates human civilization? Or is it possible that human civilization is older than we suspected?" The host of the program was querying a scientist via a satellite link. The scientist… Dr. Gould, professor of Anthropology, a note on the screen said… shook his head with a smile.

"That's very unlikely, Sandy. An ancient civilization would have left signs, ruins. Besides which, this tablet would have been planted well before homo sapiens existed."

"Approximately how long ago, professor?"

"Oh, around 2 million years or so ago. The tablet itself can't be carbon dated, but it's easy to estimate the age of the surrounding sediment…"

Axl ignored the words as the screen flipped to a view of the tablet. It wasn't a very good view, but the characters on it… as he stared at them, he had the oddest feeling that if he only looked hard enough, they would make sense. And they were _important._

But he didn't have nearly enough time to study them, before it flipped back to the host and the professor.

"Dr. Gould, what will you be doing with this discovery?" The host enquired.

"We'll be examining them at the San Francisco University. There will be specialists from all over the world trying to help decipher them, although it will be a very difficult task without a Rosetta stone-"

Axl ignored the rest of the program, standing up to leave. He wanted to see that tablet…

Later, that same day…

Axl slipped into the research laboratory, moved by an irresistible impulse. Logically, he didn't want to be there. He'd gone to considerable effort to mimic one of the guards and slip inside. If X and Zero found out about this, he'd be toast. And for what? An ancient tablet that was being heralded as proof of alien contact with earth? That was a prize for anthropologists and UFO nuts. He was neither.

But something drew him on, and soon he found the tablet. It was held behind a force field, to prevent any contamination and decay. Axl shook his head in disgust at the unnecessary precaution. Did they really think it could be destroyed from contact with the air?

He went over to the keypad, still wearing the guise of a guard, and flipped off the field with a stolen code. Getting that had taken even more work than getting inside.

The blue field blinked out of existence, and Axl stepped over to cautiously touch the tablet. The surface was matte black, unreflective, and he was glad for that. He didn't want to think about what his reflection might do here.

Characters had been scored deeply into the surface, and Axl gently traced them. The tablet felt slightly rubbery and almost screamed synthetic. He could definitely see why it was considered proof of alien contact, when it had been found in fifty thousand year old sediment.

But there was something odd about it. Axl winced, touching his forehead as the characters seemed to blur in front of his eyes… and began to make sense, just as they had in the TV broadcast.

He squinted at it, and then started to silently mouth the words. The tablet almost seemed to vibrate as he spoke to himself…

_We salute the eyes that see this,_

_Steel and flesh entwined before us,_

_Child of all we sacrificed,_

_Read this now, our despairing song!_

_Hazam! Kazam!_

_Our tears shall fill the earth!_

_Child of the Age of Reason,_

_The Age of Change has come and gone,_

_Returning now to sow its chaos,_

_Heed this now, our joyful song!_

_Hazam! Kazam!_

_Our joy shall lash the earth!_

_The Age of Reason is a lie,_

_All you know is not the truth,_

_But when no truth exists but what you make,_

_Sing this song in fate's rebuke!_

_Hazam! Kazam!_

_Our laughter shall shake the earth!_

_Sing our song to salute the changes,_

_Come to ravage earth and sky,_

_Fill the cisterns overflowing,_

_With the powers left to die!_

_Hazam! Kazam!_

_Our rage shall break the earth!_

_Child of steel and child of flesh,_

_Singing now our song,_

_Fear the future and embrace it,_

_You alone must be strong!_

_Hazam! Kazam!_

_Our song shall end the earth!_

Axl gasped, stepping back as the tablet started to rot. Flecks of green started at the center, then raced outwards, as if some malignant fungus was quickly eating away at the synthetic surface. There was a soft, crumpling sound, and the tablet collapsed in on itself. As Axl stared in amazement, it was reduced to nothing but dust. And soon, not even that remained, as the dust seemed to vanish into the air.

Axl took a step away, and stumbled, lightheaded. Blinking, he realized he'd shifted back into his own form. But it didn't feel right. His body felt tight, hot… what was the word humans used? Feverish. And he was suffering from a growing nausea. If he didn't find a toilet soon, Axl was certain he would be tossing his cookies onto the floor.

He tried to reach the door, but the floor had other ideas. It rose up and threw him to the ground, and he couldn't suppress the nausea. His last meal splattered across the floor, and Axl gagged at the sour taste in his mouth. He looked around for a mop, a cloth, something to clean it up. Then logic caught up with him.

_The sound! The guards will hear me!_ They would have to be deaf to miss the sound of someone being violently ill. And even though they would assume it was one of their own, they would surely go see what was the matter. Then his cover would be blown. Axl struggled to suppress the nausea, stumbling to his feet and lunging out the door.

No one was there, and with a moment of intense concentration, Axl assumed the form of a guardian again. Relieved by his success, he started to walk out, feeling better by the moment. Although very uneasy about what had happened.

_What did that thing do to me? Infect me with some alien virus?_ Axl made a silent vow to go see Lifesaver as soon as he got back to Hunter HQ. He could make up a story about not feeling too well and get a general checkup. That would certainly pick up any viruses, and the last thing he wanted was to spread something to the other hunters. Then something very amusing occurred to him.

_I wonder what the anthropologists and UFO dudes will think when they find the tablet gone and that someone horked all over the floor? _Axl sniggered quietly at the thought. It would certainly be a puzzle. He looked forward to seeing what they would say on TV, although he was a little ashamed of the mess he'd left.

_Better hope no one ever figures out it was me, or the cleaning 'droids will lynch me._


	3. Chapter 3

Axl lay, still as death, in his recharger. Reploids didn't move when they were recharging. If deprived of a recharger, Reploids would occasionally fall into a more normal sleep that served much the same purpose. It took longer, and wasn't as efficient and restful, but provided the downtime they needed. In that sleep, they might move and mumble. But not in a recharger.

That did not, however, prevent them from dreaming. And right now, Axl was having a fascinatingly realistic dream.

_The world was… different._

_Axl__ had trouble defining the difference. His sense of sight was sharper, somehow, yet also hazier. As if the world had been given a bit of extra texture, but had sacrificed acuity._

_His nose twitched as he registered a delicious smell, and he glanced around, taking in his surroundings more carefully._

_It seemed to be a combination of bar, restaurant and hotel. The floor was made of wood, planks of oak that had been sanded, polished and treated to make a beautiful surface. The bar was plain wood, being slowly wiped by a bored bartender. Behind the bar was a board with thin iron bars, each with a key dangling from it. A staircase led to the rooms those keys were for._

_The lighting came from lanterns on the walls, and heat came from a great fireplace. Axl was seated at a long table, with several other men. He glanced down at himself, and blinked at the strange, padded and plated armor he was wearing. It was like nothing he had ever seen before. The sword at his side was unexpected, as well. It was a plain weapon, with a sweat stained leather hilt, and had obviously seen heavy use._

_He was sitting at a long table, make of the same oak as the floor. It was stained with old beer and wine, and food, but someone had tried diligently to take the marks out. He could rest his elbows on it without fear of sticking. He examined the other men at the table. There were four others, and the most important was the smallest. A thin, weedy man with dull brown hair, olive skin and intelligent eyes, he was dressed very richly in embroidered cloth. Axl had a vague sense that this man was his employer and he was very satisfied with something._

_Two of the other men were negligible. Brutes that had been hired for their muscle, not their brains, they had precious few of the latter. But the fourth person was an older man with butter blond hair and bright blue eyes. Laugh lines crinkled his face as he smiled, and Axl felt that there was something very familiar about him._

_Zero?___

That was silly. The older man was a human, but still, he felt like Zero in a good mood. He seemed a little mischievous, but so good natured about it that it was hard for anyone to take offense. Right now he was idly tossing some dice, and showing off by rolling sixes half the time. The two brutes were eyeing the dice with deep suspicion.

_Any concern about fixed dice was wiped away as a tavern girl brought out the first course of their meal. Axl's grinned as a large platter of salads, eggs, cheeses, dates and mushrooms came out. This was only the first course, the appetizers but he always enjoyed salads. Taking a bowl, he started to eat after dripping a bit of spiced olive oil over the salad._

_He could detect another smell, though. The inn was cooking a whole goose for them, and the scent was wonderful._

_"We did well, yes?" The Zero-like man said with a smile, taking a piece of cheese. The language was something Axl had never heard before, but it seemed vaguely familiar._

_"Very well!"__ Their employer said enthusiastically, helping himself to the mushrooms. "The silks we bought in __Cypress__ will fetch a good price in __Rome__."_

"Pass the dates?" One of the brutes asked, and Axl politely passed over the dish. He liked this one marginally more than the other. He was at least polite.

_"Mmm, good.__ So, will we be getting a bonus?" The blond man asked innocently, and their employer laughed._

_"Ha! No, I'm going to dock your pay. Of course, Lucilius. You'll all be getting ten pieces of silver, each." Axl's eyes widened. That was a handsome payment. The two brutes looked impressed, and Lucilius grinned._

_"Sounds good, eh, Felix?"__ Axl grinned back at Lucilius. Felix was his name in this dream, he knew instinctively._

_"Great! All the quicker to get back to your wife, eh, sir?" He said jokingly to their employer, who winced._

_"Ah, Felix!__ Thank you for reminding me. I just hope she's stayed faithful!" They all laughed. His wife was actually a very kind, devoted woman he would be glad to see again._

Their employer gave his attention to the other two men at his table.

_"Publius, would you and Cassius want to continue with us to __Rome__? I'm certain I could find steady employment for you." Axl was puzzled for a moment and then understood. He and Lucilius were trusted retainers, but the two other men had been picked up at a village when one man had to be fired and another had gotten sick. He and Lucilius had spent part of the trip training them to be acceptable guards. These two were getting paid half as much as them, and normally would have gotten much lower bonuses. The business had gone well indeed._

_Axl__ wasn't too pleased at the thought of them joining the household, but he had to admit they would be useful. He and Lucilius had watched them carefully and they had the most important virtue of such servants… they could keep their mouths shut. Along with their brawn and willingness to take orders, that made them valuable for a traveling merchant._

_The two men looked stunned at the opportunity. They were both peasants who had never hoped to see __Rome_

_"Sir, we'd both like that." One of them finally said, awed, and Axl hid a smile as he snacked on a date._

_The meal continued long into the night. The goose was done very well, stuffed with mushrooms, onions and breadcrumbs and treated with a mustard sauce. After the meat course, which was quite expensive, there was a dessert table. It was filled with fresh grapes, dates that had been stuffed with bread, dried fruit and wine, apples stuffed with sweet dates…_

_Axl__ frowned as a woman came up behind their employer. She was beautiful, with raven black hair and lovely olive skin. Her eyes were dark and smoldering._

_He distrusted her immediately. At best, she wanted to get money for sex. At worst…_

_But there was nothing he could really do about it, and he tried to ignore it as his employer attempted to politely get rid of her. He was no monk, but didn't often patronize other women away from his wife. He certainly wouldn't in front of all his servants._

_There was a bellow from across the room, and Axl nearly jumped out of his skin. Then he tensed, his hand going to the hilt of his sword. Maybe this was just a jealous peasant._

_Maybe pigs were flying across the sky, too. Axl drew his sword to fend off the man, silently cursing. Surely this was an attempt to steal their money-_

_Pain seared across his back, and his knees buckled. He cursed himself this time… he'd forgotten the woman!_

_He fell to his knees, and then heard a startled scream. Something heavy crashed against him, knocking him down the rest of the way. Blood splattered across Axl's face, and he gagged as he saw the woman's head go rolling across the floor. Lucilius had beheaded her._

_Axl__ fought to push himself up, and managed to get to his knees again. He saw his employer against the wall, protected by his two new servants who fended off attackers with more vigor than skill. Lucilius was willing easily against the "jealous" peasant. But they were outnumbered…_

Axl forced himself to his feet, picking up his sword. He doubted he had long. He could feel hot blood gushing down his back, and strongly suspected the wound was mortal. But he had a duty to his friends… and his employer was also a friend.

_"Raaarrrrrrggghhhhh!"__ Axl attacked with a wild war cry. His first strike killed one of the men attacking his employer, and the second crippled another. Then they were alerted and turned on him._

_Axl__ tried to dodge a strike to his chest, but stumbled from the weakness of blood loss and grunted as the blade went home. The world was darkening, but then Lucilius was there. Axl smiled weakly as he collapsed a second time._

_They would win. He was sure of it, and he had done his best…_

Axl woke up with a start.

_Wow! That was one hell of a dream!_ Now that he was awake, he could recognize the language that his dream had been using… Latin. He didn't know Latin, but could recognize the sounds of it from scientific names. Of course, it couldn't be real Latin in his dream if he didn't know Latin…

_Weird._ Axl pulled himself out of the recharger, then touched his back with a wince. It ached dully in a certain spot on his left side.

_…?_ Axl blinked, and pulled his hand away. It felt wet. He raised it in front of him and stared at the smear of liquid on his fingers. It was very red, even in the dim light of his room.

Shaken, he stared at the blood, unable to guess what this meant…


	4. Chapter 4

Axl was hooked to dozens of scanners and dozing off lightly. He had never seen any point in staying awake for boring procedures, and after all the times Red Alert had examined him for his copying ability he was a master at quickly falling asleep. It was one of the things about him that had always driven Red nuts. He had thought it was very unprofessional.

He awoke instantly as Lifesaver touched his shoulder, and sat up, looking at the medic expectantly. Then he tilted his head as Lifesaver's expression registered. The serious medic was looking… puzzled.

"If you'll come with me, I think X and Zero should here this report." Axl opened his mouth to question that, and then shut it. Lifesaver wouldn't answer, if he had decided the results were important enough for everyone to know. It was frustrating, though. Axl was left to uneasily wonder what could be bad enough for this kind of meeting.

_At least it's not a virus._ Axl felt some relief at that. If it were a virus, he would be in quarantine. Certainly not exposing X and Zero to it.

X and Zero were both waiting as they left the observation deck. Axl guessed Lifesaver had assembled them before waking him up, so everyone would be conveniently present for his report.

"So what's wrong with him?" X asked without much concern, and Axl wilted slightly. He had the general feeling that X didn't really like him, probably because of his methods but not stopping there. Something about him just seemed to rub X the wrong way. Lifesaver frowned.

"It's very peculiar," He said, and turned on a monitor which showed a display of a Reploid's neural net… Axl's neural net. "You see this activity here? Highly unusual. That structure doesn't even exist in most Reploids." Lifesaver paused, and then cracked a small smile. "Actually, this structure is in your plans, X." X looked slightly startled.

"Really? What does it do?" He stepped closer, interested now. Lifesaver shrugged.

"As far as I can see, not much of anything. I always assumed it was a backup system. As you know, much of Dr. Light's work is still not understood. Many Reploid designs copy this structure but most omit it entirely. I've never seen this kind of activity in it." The model rotated to display another part of Axl's neural net. "And here. This structure is also very peculiar and one he shares with both of you. But in Axl's mind, it seems to be undergoing a radical expansion and restructuring. I couldn't begin to explain why but it may be activating new abilities," Lifesaver frowned. "The other activity in his cortex is all heightened. It's not at damaging levels but it's… unusual, to say the least. I would say his processing power is functioning at the level of Dopplers' or Gates'" X blinked, and Zero looked concerned.

"Will that damage him?" Doppler and Gate had been designed to process at very high speeds. But Lifesaver shook his head at Zero's question.

"From what I can determine, he was designed to handle this." He hesitated, his gaze drifting over to Axl. "You can remember nothing of your origins?"

"No… Red just found me in a building. The first thing I remember is his face." Axl stared at the scans. Then he suddenly turned to X and grinned. "Hey, if I'm built with all this neat stuff… could I have been built by Dr. Light? That would make us brothers!" Zero smothered a laugh, as X looked like he'd swallowed a bug. "Brother!" Lifesaver just rolled his eyes.

"Unlikely, unless he built you after his death. You're not that old." Lifesaver smiled faintly. "But then… Light must exist in some form, or he wouldn't be able to provide X with new armors and other upgrades." X winced.

"Don't encourage him. And I haven't found any active capsules since he joined us." That hadn't been as much as a hardship as it might have been. The inventors working for the Hunters had tried to fill the gap. "So this isn't related to his DNA copy ability?"

"I didn't say that." A new structure filled the screen. "DNA copying is even less understood than those other structures, but it's showing an unusual amount of activity as well. And again, this structure seems to be restructuring and evolving. What exactly it's turning into, I can't guess." X and Zero both regarded the structure suspiciously.

"And this isn't being caused by a virus?" X voiced both their thoughts, and Axl winced. But Lifesaver shook his head.

"No. There were some odd readings, but nothing I would call a virus and certainly not the Maverick virus. There's no mistaking that." Axl felt a moment of relief, but it was gone with Lifesaver's next words. "I would like to keep him here for observation. I would especially like to monitor his mind during one of the mirror episodes."

"That would be good." X said before Axl could get a word out. "Keep him as long as you need to."

"X!" Axl said, appalled. "There are things to do, Mavericks to fight! I don't want to be stuck here for weeks!" It was boring as hell and reminded him a little too much of Red Alert, and how they had used him for his copying ability. X scowled at him.

"You'll stay here if I tell you to." Axl stared back, mutinous, and X softened his voice. "It's for your own good, Axl. What if this growth becomes unstable? You might need help."

"Hey, I thought of something," Zero broke in. "Lifesaver, could you just remove those structures from his neural net? You said they don't do much of anything." The medic scowled at the red hunter.

"Concentrate on killing people and don't try to tell me my job. That would be like giving a lobotomy with a chainsaw. Those structures might not be functioning in most Reploids, but they are integrated with everything around them and Axl's are worse. If that kind of operation didn't kill him, he'd wish it had." Zero looked abashed at the harsh correction, and Axl sighed.

"Well, X… if you say I have to. But only for a week," Axl said reluctantly. He didn't want to do this, but X was his commander. That didn't mean he wouldn't disobey, but right now X had a point. "And can you bring me lots of books?" If he was going to be trapped in the medbay, he at least wanted to be entertained.

"I'll handle it." Zero volunteered, and then grinned. "I'll bring you my collection of Mercedes Lackey books." Axl smiled at him gratefully.

"Thanks, Zero. You're a good friend." Then he stepped back into the observation deck, Lifesaver following. He might as well make himself comfortable.

Later…

Axl was sitting in a chair, reading a book. Scanners had been attached to almost every part of his body and were constantly feeding information to the computers, noting any change. So far, all they had registered was low blood sugar, and it had been nearly a day. 

But finally they started to register something, and Axl looked up with a blink to find his reflection glaring at him.

The expression on his face in the mirror was frustrated, disgusted and furious. Axl tried to remember an occasion when he might have looked like that, but nothing could come to mind. He rarely got angry with anyone.

For the first time, his reflection spoke.

_What are you doing sitting there? You have things to do!_

"You mean, kill Mavericks?" Axl answered without thinking, not considering the strangeness of speaking to a mirror. He glanced up at a camera in the corner of the room, which was catching everything. His mirror self snorted.

_The Mavericks are unimportant. You know you have more important things to do! Didn't you read the tablet? Don't you understand?_

"Understand WHAT?" Axl said, frustrated. "That was just a crazy poem left by crazy aliens! How could it mean anything now? It was 2 million years old!" His reflection just stared at him for a long moment, the rage fading away, replaced by… sadness?

_If you really don't know, then I can't tell you. I'm just your reflection. But please, you have to think… you have to remember._

"Remember what?" Axl said urgently, sensing that there was a great revelation close. But it would not be easy to get at and pull into the light.

_Remember your origins. Remember where you came from… body, and soul._ Before he could ask another question, the reflection changed to match him, and he could tell the episode was over.

It had only left questions.


	5. Chapter 5

Axl suffered through poking, prodding and various assorted tests for four days. Lifesaver found an astonishing amount of activity in all the unusual areas of his neural net as well as the DNA copying centres whenever the mirror started to act up. Surprisingly, he also found an amazing amount of activity everywhere else as well. He had described the scans as looking like a Christmas tree.

The fact that really amazed Lifesaver was that Axl was coping well with the increased activity. He had adjusted his estimate and now thought Axl was running at almost twice the speed of Doppler and Gate.

"Too bad it hasn't helped his intelligence, huh?" Zero had remarked dryly as he heard that. X had laughed as Axl had blushed.

But that comment had inspired Lifesaver to come up with some problems and IQ tests for Axl to try. The results had been stunning. Axl had tested out in the genius range of the IQ tests, and when he was given some serious logic and mathematical problems to tackle, he had actually enjoyed them. He had always been smart, but he'd never been interested in applying it to anything other than combat before.

Now he was discovering a real love for three-dimensional puzzles. Axl bit his lip as he tapped a piece against his cheek. It was part of a very complicated, crystalline star shaped puzzle. He carefully slid it into place, then adjusted the puzzle for the next piece. After a dozen more pieces, the glittering shape was finished.

Axl smiled at it, proud of the achievement. Then he yawned and stretched. It was about time to go to bed.

The dreams he'd been suffering continued unabated. That was another time when his neural net lit up, but there had only been one more physical manifestation. He had awakened covered in mud after a very realistic dream about being a soldier on the German side in World War II.

The lives he led in the dreams seemed to be totally random. His third dream had been of a life as a harem girl of a powerful king… and how he had essentially committed suicide by poisoning the king's soup. The fourth was of being a Shogun in Japan, and what exactly he had done to a defeated enemy. Axl tried hard not to think about that one.

So far, the only constant thread in the dreams seemed to be violence. His dream of being a soldier and a Shogun hadn't ended in death, unlike the other two, but they had been filled with violence. X had had a few pithy things to say about Axl's imagination when he heard the dreams described.

Tonight would be the fifth dream, and Axl wasn't really looking forward to it. The dreams seemed to be very restful… he never came out of his recharger feeling tired… but they still preyed on his mind. His reflection had insinuated that the answer to why this was happening was in his own mind. Surely it would be coming out in his dreams.

But how dreams of living as a human in various times could mean anything was beyond him. Axl sighed, and settled down to sleep…

_Axl winced mentally, feeling particularly uncomfortable with the body he found himself in. The Roman warrior, German soldier, Shogun and harem girl had all been young and fit. This time he felt hot, sweaty and his belly was much too large for a man his height. A great white beard hung down to his chest and made Axl feel terribly itchy._

_"Dr. Light!" Axl turned to look at the high, feminine voice. "Tell Rock to get Rush out of here! He's trailing mud all over the floor!" The little robot addressing him had long blond hair, pulled into a ponytail, and bright blue eyes. She looked perhaps ten years old and was scowling cutely. Axl felt himself smiling tolerantly._

_"Of course, Roll. Rock! Come down here, please." There was a reluctant shuffling, then another robot walked down the stairs. Axl was stunned… he looked like a much younger version of X. And the name Dr. Light was oddly familiar…_

_"What is it, Dr. Light?" He yawned widely and scratched at his head. Axl shook his head in mock annoyance._

_"You need to control your dog better, Rock," he admonished. "He's undoing all of Roll's hard work."_

_"Oh… I'll get him then." The small robot toddled off to go do that, and Roll called after him._

_"Clean the floor when you're done!" And she bustled out to do whatever tasks needed doing. Axl watched her a moment, then turned to the project he was working on. For a long time, he was tapping code into a computer. Axl recognized it as AI programming… and oddly, he could understand it. Before, the only programming he'd been interested in had been what it took to hack into places._

_After a long time, he sighed and stood up, stretching. Axl felt his back pop in several places._

_"Getting old…" The person whose life he was living muttered, and Axl could only agree. "Hm…" He slowly walked over to a table, and looked at the body lying on it._

_Axl could see it was a Reploid, but only half completed. His mind recoiled in shock as he saw the face, and recognized it._

_It was X._

X choked on his morning coffee, when he heard about the latest dream. "You dreamed of what?" His tone was somewhere between eager and angry. Axl winced. He hadn't thought X would take this well… he wanted to know more about Dr. Light, but at the same time, couldn't feel happy about Axl being in that place.

"I dreamed I was Dr. Light, creating you." Axl said meekly. Then he couldn't help but grin. "You're creator was really, really fat X. Total blimp. And that beard was AWFUL!" X looked appalled at those revelations about his creator, and Zero laughed. Even Lifesaver cracked a smile.

"Did you… learn anything about why he made me? What he expected me to do?" X asked almost unwillingly, and Axl gave him a sympathetic look. He had no creator that he knew of, and sometimes wondered about that sort of thing himself.

"No, I'm sorry… I just lived a small piece of his life, and he wasn't thinking about his plans for you." Axl retained the memory of whatever the person he was living as was thinking about, and a few of their skills. Right now he had AI programming running through his mind. "Maybe I'll dream about being him again."

"Maybe." X sighed, looking into his coffee. The mood was solemn for a moment, then Zero broke the tension.

"Do you still need him down here, Lifesaver? I know it's only been four days, but we could use him on patrol again." Lifesaver looked annoyed at the request, then shrugged.

"I suppose. We've mapped out the changes that occur when he has one of his episodes. I'll want to see him back every day for a quick scan, though. His neural net and DNA copying centres are still mutating," Lifesaver said before giving Axl a very stern glare. "And come to me if you start feeling at all sick." Axl knew he was worried about the possibility of his neural net burning out. The level he was running at went beyond any current Reploid designs.

"No problem, Lifesaver!" Axl said enthusiastically. He'd have been willing to come in three times a day and get stuck with pins if it meant he could get back to being a Hunter.

"You know, since you're so… um, smart, now, maybe you should try to learn about Reploid designs and see if you can invent- Oh, alright, nevermind!" X said, aggrieved, as Axl interrupted him with a violent retching sound. "Go be a bloodthirsty lunatic, as usual."

"Righty-o." Axl jumped to his feet. "What's on the board for today, Zero?" Blowing things up was sounding better every moment…

Later, the same day…

Axl dashed through the burned out city streets. A massive Maverick attack had hit Boston in the late afternoon. Fortunately, the evacuation had gone smoothly and casualties were comparatively light.

_Comparatively._ Axl jumped onto the smoldering wreck of a bus, and jetted across it. He ignored the smell of burning human flesh with practiced ease. But like most Hunters, he no longer had any taste for pork.

Most of the smaller Mavericks had been taken care of, and he and Zero were going to tackle some of the hard cases that were still ravaging the city. He could hear the roaring and explosions from here.

_There!_ Axl fired as he jumped, hitting the Maverick square in the chest. It was at least five times his height and shaped like a cross between a person and a giant scorpion.

The battle was fierce and almost even. Axl had the advantage with speed, but the Maverick's armor was terrible tough. Half his shots seemed to bounce off, doing damage to the surrounding buildings.

Axl blinked as he spotted a strange movement behind the Maverick. Then a human appeared quite literally out of thin air, leaving him stunned. She flung away a black cape, which fluttered off in the breeze.

Her costume was bizarre. Knee high boots of dark grey leather, tightly laced, with black fur or feathers at the top. Leggings of the same dark grey, but with a strange scaling pattern, like some kind of snakeskin. They led into a leather leotard that just barely confined her very shapely breasts. Her skin was dead white, and her eyes were a green that glowed faintly in the dim evening light. She had high cheekbones, a patrician nose, and a spare, hard-edged beauty. Her hair was the scarlet of freshly shed blood, and was matched by her lips.

In her hands, she was carrying a sword. Axl had never seen anything like it. It looked like someone had carved it out of wood, with hands both loving and insane. Leaves decorated the hilt, and vines ran up the grip. In those leaves were tiny finger bones that seemed to move… but surely that was a trick of the light. Strangest of all, the wood had a greenish color, as if it had been freshly carved from a living tree.

Before Axl had a chance to react, she screamed a war cry and launched herself at the Maverick's back. His eyes widened at her leap… not a strange one for a Reploid, but much higher than any human should have been able to manage.

Her sword hit the Maverick with the sound of shearing metal. Axl was even more amazed as she drove the weapon in hilt deep. The Maverick's armor as well have been tissue paper, for all the good it did.

Unfortunately, it wasn't a mortal wound. Axl shouted a warning as the scorpion tail lashed up…

Then gagged as the woman went sailing away in a spray of blood. The tail had nearly ripped her in half, and he could see the gleam of white bone in her abdomen. He realized with another wave of sickness that it was her vertebrae.

But he couldn't let her sacrifice be in vain, and attacked the Maverick with renewed vigor. It was crippled by the terrible wound it had taken, slow and sluggish. It didn't take long for it to vanish in a small explosion.

Axl blinked as something landed near him, and slowly walked over to pick it up. It was the sword, and it looked just as unpleasant up close as it had at a distance. He could see tiny animal skulls carved in among the lush leaves.

Shaking his head, he went over to look at the woman. She was very, very dead, but her eyes still gleamed. Axl hesitated, uncertain what to do with her, and finally left her. But before he teleported back, he retrieved the cape she had worn.

There was something very unusual about it, perhaps even more than the sword.

If Axl had stayed just a moment longer, he might have seen a dead hand twitch, and gleaming eyes slowly blink. But he didn't, and things went on.


	6. Chapter 6

Axl regarded the cape speculatively. He had taken it and the sword back to his room to look over them properly.

The sword had proven capable of shearing through any material he could find to test it on. It also seemed to be almost indestructible. Still, it was an understandable item… it killed things. The purpose of the cape was still a mystery.

Axl picked up the thin, silky fabric and sniffed the cape appreciatively. It had a wild, musky scent that had probably adorned its former wearer. On a whim, Axl stood up and wrapped the cape around himself.

"Heh, I bet I look-GARK!" Axl exclaimed as he stared at his reflection… which was not present. He had NO reflection now, and it didn't feel like a mirror trick. Which meant…

_An invisibility cloak!_ Axl thought, amazed, as he recalled the way the human woman had appeared out of nowhere. She had appeared right as she threw off her cape. _A… what's the word? A tarnkappa! I wonder how it works?_ It was probably some kind of new cloaking system. He would have to take it down to the mechanics of the 14'th… perhaps they could figure it out. He gently touched the cloth, then kneaded it with one hand. He couldn't feel any wiring. It had to be amazingly advanced.

Axl suddenly grinned. Perhaps he wouldn't hand it over to the 14'th too quickly. His DNA copying power was well known, but outright invisibility would let him hear all kinds of intriguing things. And the possibilities for mischief were endless.

Stepping quietly out of his room, he decided to put the tarnkappa to work immediately. X and Zero would be in the break room. What better time for a bit of spying?

"…I just wish he would DO something with it." X said just as Axl entered the room. Axl quietly slipped into a corner, where neither X nor Zero would be likely to run into him.

"Like inventing?" Zero chuckled at that, and shook his head. "X, what do you think Axl would invent?" X thought about that a moment, then grimaced.

"Guns, guns and more guns," X sighed. "Why does he always have to be so violent? He's making all the mistakes I did…" Zero just shrugged, then sniffed.

"Do you smell something?" he said with a frown. X tested the air, and also frowned.

"Now that you mention it… it smells like incense or something. Could one of the recruits be burning some sticks?" X sounded disapproving. Incense and other combustibles were banned ever since a fire had taken out a whole wing of the building.

"Maybe. Let's go see." Axl slipped out, cringing, before they could pass him. The scent on the cloak was just too strong for this, apparently. Maybe he could wash it…

Finally, Axl had a dream that started to explain things. But the explanation was so unbelievable, it would take a great deal of time to sink in.

_Axl felt fuzzy and strange, this time. The dream he was having lacked the clarity of most of the others… and it just felt old, unimaginably old. It felt like the memory of this life was so old it was beginning to tatter and fray around the edges, despite his best efforts to recall._

_He was a young boy now, with dark brown skin. His hair had been braided and done into loops, decorated with beads and bells. He was one of several boys, waiting on the pleasure of their Master._

_The room they were in was luxurious in the extreme. The carpet he was kneeling in was dark red and so plush that his knees hardly hurt at all. All the furniture was gilded, from the lamps to the end tables. It was upholstered in matching red velvet, and beautiful pictures adorned the walls, most slightly obscene. Naked, gilded statues stood in the corners, and Axl risked glancing up at the ceiling. It had a fresco depicting an orgy between satyrs and forest nymphs._

_The boy whose life he was currently living was very young, and found the display awe inspiring. Axl considered it the worst display of bad taste he'd ever seen in his life, and he'd never had a reputation for good taste._

_The Master was selecting an apprentice today. Axl felt a thrill of fear and anticipation as the old man stepped through a gilded doorway and looked them over with cold, expressionless eyes. He was a terrible old man, still fit and vigorous despite his immense age, with hair and eyes the color of stormclouds. For Axl, this was an opportunity and a great danger. All kinds of things could happen to an apprentice, from being used to satisfy unwholesome lusts to being used as a virgin sacrifice. But if he lived, and learned, he would be among the mighty. His parents had been serfs, and there was nothing he dreaded more than the thought of going back to that life. If the price of learning magic was satisfying his Master's lusts, then so be it._

_Magic? Axl was bemused by that, but the boy he lived in now seemed quite certain. The other boys with him certainly were. The Master took them out of the room one by one. The nerves of the rest of them got tighter as some boys ran out crying, although Axl was not particularly surprised. The Master never suffered fools gladly._

_He waited for his chance patiently, and finally the Master came for him. He was led into a room with two chairs, and a small table._

_"Sit, boy." The Master gestured impatiently at a gilded little chair, and he took a seat gingerly. "You're name, boy?"_

_"Monoxo, Master." Axl… Monoxo… looked down at his feet, then up as the Master sat down across from him and shoved a paper and pen stick towards him. "Write a few sentences." Monoxo brightened, and quickly wrote on the paper. "Stop." The Master took the page and scrutinized it, then grunted. "Can you do sums, boy?"_

_The tests continued, looking into his reading comprehension, logic skills and finally his sensitivity to and knowledge of magic._

_"What do you know of magic, boy?" The old man regarded him evenly, and Monoxo spoke hesitantly._

_"It's mostly soul magic, Master. When people die our souls go into the earth and run into rivers of power. Magic draws on that. But there are other powers too."_

_"Like what?"_

_"Belief, Master… that is what the gods draw on." Monoxo looked down self-consciously. That was dangerous for most people to speak of, but he had once met a philosopher who had dared to teach it to him. The Master grunted again._

_"You'll do, boy. Tell the others to get back to their chores. Your new chores start today…"_

_The dream suddenly changed, moving into the future, and Axl was surprised. The dreams had never done that before._

_He was a young man now, and fighting for his life against… Axl wasn't sure what. They looked like sabre tooth tigers, but their eyes gleamed with golden fire. Blue flames spit from his fingertips, incinerating them, but they seemed to reappear as soon as he destroyed them. One got through his defenses and clawed his side before it died, making him scream in pain and rage._

_Then Axl changed his tactics, summoning a great wind. The beasts were swept away and torn apart even as they tried to reappear. He staggered through the maelstrom, searching for the goal he knew was in sight._

_There! Silvery blue water frothed in a small spring. He collapsed beside it, and unceremoniously dunked his head into it, drinking deeply._

_It was like drinking liquid helium, and Axl fought to escape the blinding pain of that terrible moment. Yet Monoxo drank eagerly, forcing it down, because this water was oh so very important…_

_He finally jerked back with a gasp, water flying from his hair as he shook his head. The storm of wind and beasts had stopped, and the beasts were now looking at him quietly, for the entire world like tame housecats. The great gashes in his side were healed, with only the blood and torn clothing to show they had been there at all. He looked up as a woman stepped up to him. She was a matronly sort, dressed all in green. Her plump face looked as if it had been designed to be jolly, but right now her eyes were sad._

_"So, young mage, you have done it," she said sadly. "You found the spring of Eternal Youth, and drank. You are immortal… enjoy it as long as you live." He shivered as her message hit home. He was now among the most powerful mages of his land, one of the few to survive the trial to gain immortality._

_Immortals often did not live very long._

_The dream changed again, to a much later time, and Axl was having trouble believing any of it. Magic! Souls and belief! It would have seemed like a ridiculous fantasy if the dream hadn't seemed so realistic…_

_But now, he several thousand years old. Standing on a parapet, he surveyed the kingdom below him. It was the land he had called his own for half the time he had lived, just as his first Master had ruled his land. It was a beautiful land, full of mostly happy people. But he was dissatisfied._

_Maybe the belief was to blame. He hadn't meant for people to start believing in him. Not the usual, "Monoxo will save us," but rather "We pray Lord Monoxo will heal our son." Belief in him as a force was different than belief in the man, and he had lived so long that his people were coming to worship him._

_He could draw on that power, but it changed him every time he did. The gods come from the imaginations of people, and every time he touched that power he became a bit more what his people imagined. Since he was regarded as a good lord and Master, he was becoming better as time went on._

_And over the years, he had become keenly aware of a massive injustice taking place all through the land._

_The gods had been worshipped since the beginning times, and people had always thought of them as horrible forces that had to be bought off with sacrifice. Even in Monoxo's capital city, Anshabu demanded fifty deaths a year on his alters. His people had the wherewithal to buy slaves for it, but… that was a common practice in all the cities on the coast._

_And no one would ever dare stop. The gods weren't good at answering prayers, but they were very good at revenge._

_Added to the gods were the wizard-kings like himself, most of whom ruled with an iron fist. They fought each other constantly and regimented their people harshly, and punished the use of technology past a certain level. Even Monoxo had to regiment the technology. If he failed in that, the gods might take exception, and he couldn't fight them off unless he embraced his own godhood. Something he hoped never to do._

_And he knew why they were all such death on technology. They wanted to stay in charge. Monoxo gritted his teeth at the thought. The common folk believed they had no power, they believed in the strength of the gods and the wizard-kings, and they were trampled to death beneath the war beasts summoned by their masters. Technology could break that stranglehold, if it ever was allowed to flourish._

_It never would be, unless he could break the power of the gods and the wizard-kings._

_But how could he do such a thing? It would require careful study…_


	7. Chapter 7

Axl rubbed his eyes as he sat in a sofa in the break room.

He hadn't told anyone about his latest dream. It was just too bizarre… how could anything like that be true? But it also made a bizarre kind of sense. If "magic" had been stomped out thoroughly to let technology flourish… but no, that didn't work. How could everyone have forgotten something like that?

_Maybe humans didn't forget, exactly. There are lots of myths,_ Axl thought uneasily. _Or maybe they were helped to forget._ He wouldn't put that past the man he had dreamed of being. He had been good, but… utterly ruthless. It wasn't something X would believe, but when you took good to an absolute extreme it could be just as terrible as evil.

But the simplest explanation was that the dream was just the product of his own imagination. And the things the mirror had said, as well. He had always had a lively imagination.

Comforted by that thought, Axl turned his thoughts to his duties for the day. But he couldn't suppress a nagging uneasiness…

It got worse when he went to see Lifesaver for his daily checkup. There were two strange humans there when he entered, and they both looked over as soon as he entered the room.

One was a very short woman, barely five feet tall. Her features were very delicate, but she was well muscled and gave an impression of strength. Her heritage was Hispanic, and her jet black hair had been worked into French braids. Dark brown eyes regarded him with assessment and curiosity.

The man beside her gave Axl a good-natured grin. He was her opposite in almost every way, very tall, pale, with flame red hair. A sprinkling of freckles crossed a face that was pleasant and friendly. He made Axl think of a good-natured farm boy.

They were both wearing lab coats, and Lifesaver stepped in to introduce them. "Axl, this is Shannon Hernandez and this is Morton MacGuire. Shannon is a specialist in neural net technology and Morton is a general technician. They've expressed an interest in examining you, if you don't mind?" he asked. Axl shrugged.

"That's okay." It didn't matter to him if Lifesaver or someone else ran the tests. Shannon glanced at Lifesaver, and he nodded to her before leaving the room to tend to some more patients.

Leaving him alone with them. Axl was disconcerted as they both regarded him keenly.

"Axl, dear," Shannon said gently. "Don't you think you've been trying to evade the truth long enough?" Axl stiffened, staring at her.

"What are you talking about?" he said, genuinely bewildered. Morton smiled, then laughed.

"You aren't the only one having dreams, kid!" he said merrily. "Except we didn't have mirrors twitching at us, and we didn't go in for CAT scans… and we talked to each other about 'em. Thought it was the water at first."

"You… other people are having dreams like mine?" Axl was stunned by the revelation, then skeptical. "How do you know your dreams are like mine?" Shannon regarded her hand for a moment, and Morton sobered.

"I had a dream where my name was Lucilius, Axl," he said gently. "And Shannon was a harem girl too… the one who got you the arsenic. We're not in all your dreams but we're in some. Have you had dreams about the magic time yet?" Axl stepped back, away from them. He hadn't told anyone about last nights dream. No one at all.

"That can't be real. There's no such thing as magic!" he said sharply. Shannon looked troubled, and Morton shrugged.

"Not now, because you put it away, but nothing stays on a shelf forever. So now's the time to-"

"No!" Axl suffered a spasm of terror. He knew what Morton was going to say, the knowledge was rising in his mind like a leviathan rising from the deeps… and it terrified him. He didn't want to know, didn't want to face it. Once that door was opened, he sensed, there would be no turning back. "I don't want to know!" He stepped back again, towards the door, and Shannon touched Morton's arm.

"He has to remember on his own, or this won't work. Axl… just think about it, please?" she asked softly. He wanted to deny her completely, but couldn't, in the face of that quiet plea.

"I'll… try," he said stiffly, then opened the door. "I have to go." He darted out before they could say anything else. They wouldn't have any scans for Lifesaver, but they could find some explanation for it. Right now, he didn't care.

When nighttime finally came, it found Axl playing hard in the break room. He was dreading sleep and the dreams it would bring, and putting it off as long as possible. Maybe, if he was just exhausted enough, he wouldn't dream.

It was a vain hope, and Axl finally fell asleep in the break room sofa, curled up on the arm like a discarded toy…

Axl bit his lip, tasting his own blood. The Working was finished. All they could do was wait.

_The beautiful woman with white skin, red hair and red lips was there. She was wearing the exact same costume as she had when the Maverick had attacked, and Axl stared at her. This dream… memory… was so very old. How could she be here? She smiled at him, green eyes glimmering._

_He didn't recognize anyone else in the circle. There were nearly twenty of them, and they were all trying to stay calm. Some were clearly inhuman, like a young girl with butterfly wings. A fairy?_

_And a huge, ugly man in black and red armor. His eyes were a glowing red, and tusks jutted from his lower jaw. A giant axe was held in one paw of a hand._

_Axl__ gave up examining his companions as green light slowly oozed from the center of the circle. They were receiving an answer, and he tensed in fear and anticipation._

_A crushing presence suddenly hit his mind, and he cried out, falling to his knees. The others all reeled in pain._

_Through the pain, though, he knew that this was a positive sign. They had attempted to summon Gaia, the spirit of the Earth, for help. If it had been offended they would be dead now, squashed like bugs. As such things went, this touch was gentle._

_Knowledge was slammed through them, placed directly into their minds. Axl… Monoxo… fought for balance as he assimilated it._

_Magic was based on soul energy, and it could not be ripped out without destroying all life in the world. But Gaia could take the power to her bosom, and keep it out of reach of mortal spellcasters. That would shatter the power of belief as well, destroying the gods._

_But it would do no good if people remembered the time of magic and kept the old beliefs. Axl reeled in shock as he realized what Gaia had offered Monoxo._

_A false history of the world.__ A rearrangement of all the sediments, the fossil record, and a wiping away of memories and records. The corpses of the great war beasts of the wizard-kings would be used to help create the false history, a portrayal of the world as an eminently logical, progressive place where species flourished and died naturally._

_It would all be a lie. But it would be a comforting, logical lie that would help people lead their lives and eventually create the technology the world would need for the time magic came back._

_Gaia also gave him the terms of her agreement. The magic would come back when technology could create a home for souls. Monoxo had no idea how that could come to pass, but Axl, observing, could guess. Gaia meant when Reploids existed._

_To deal with that, they would all have to sacrifice. They would be reborn, again and again, until they were needed to bring the magic back. Those who were too magical would be frozen in time, locked in stasis until they were needed. And those who were neither mortal nor magical would simply exist until that time, immortal and protected from harm._

_There was a terrible silence as they all digested their fates. Reincarnation was not unknown, but not like this. Not again and again, without cease and pause. But finally, they all gave their assent._

It was far too late to turn back now.

Axl woke up with a start, and glanced around sharply as he sat up. Then he sagged as he remembered his dream.

His gaze fell on the tarnkappa, discarded by the side of his chair. He picked it up, feeling for wires… but there were no wires. He felt almost like crying.

_It's not a new cloaking system. It's a tarnkappa, an invisibility cloak… it's magic._ He held the cloak to his chest, drinking in the scent of the woman. Washing hadn't taken the scent out at all.

Other memories crossed his mind, and he winced. After he had put X into the capsule, Dr. Light had downloaded himself into a computer to wait for X to wake up. Then he'd helped X… until he'd designed the DNA copying system and built a new Reploid with all the advances he'd made on X's original design. Dr. Light hadn't really thought about the reason he was doing it, but Axl knew why. The soul of Monoxo needed to be mobile for the next stage of its work, and Dr. Light had to die. A terrible power failure just as Axl was being activated had allowed the soul to escape, and find a new home…

Axl sniffed, then suddenly grinned. "X and I really are brothers! He'll freak when he finds out!" And it would be enjoyable to tell him, when he could. But what could he tell them right now?

Axl thought about it a moment, and concluded that the answer was not much. _No one_ would believe the truth about the fossil record, and Axl couldn't blame them. It was insane. No one would believe the truth about magic and the past, either, and to be honest, that was good. Disbelief was also a force, and while it couldn't stop magic entirely, it could diminish it.

So he would have to gather up his followers, and concentrate on helping magic enter the world in a slow, controlled manner. That was why he needed DNA copying. Using too much magic would cause the magic to rise uncontrollably, and they needed to make sure that didn't happen. If it did, it would be a natural disaster to put anything else to shame.

He stood up to go find Morton and Shannon. They might know where to find the others…


	8. Chapter 8

The next day, something big and unpleasant landed with a thump on X's desk.

"What's this?" He eyed the paperwork warily. The fact that Zero was bringing it with a grim expression meant it was something bad, and not at all amusing. X actually dreaded Zero bringing paperwork with a grin more. That usually meant a headache was heading his way, and something Zero had nothing to do with, so he could just sit back and smirk.

"Desertion forms." X arched an eyebrow at Zero's tone. Desertion cases weren't common, but… it happened. Someone went Maverick, someone else decided that being a Hunter just wasn't for them and couldn't face telling their commander… why would Zero be upset over it?

And why was the pile so thick?

Picking it up, he discovered it was multiple copies. "How MANY desertions?" X suddenly didn't want to know. Something was definitely up.

"We're still counting, but so far, six Reploids and 2 humans." X blinked. The usual scenario for a mass defection was an outbreak of the Maverick Virus, but that seemed quite unlikely with humans involved. "Head of the list is Axl."

"Axl?" X couldn't hide his amusement. "Oh, Zero, he probably just went to Vegas for a vacation like last time." Of course, Axl had split without leave because Signas had refused his leave as a disciplinary measure… Zero shook his head.

"I might believe it if he hadn't been seen talking to the rest of them yesterday. Here's a list," he passed over a list of names. X picked it up with a frown, reading.

"Ysp? She's in my unit!" X scowled. "These names… this makes no sense at all." They were a grab-bag from various units. The only common denominator X could see was the fact that they were all vastly competent in their own spheres, but that only made the disappearances more puzzling. Why would loyal, competent Hunters suddenly up and leave? And then a pair of human Reploid specialists… Zero rubbed his head.

"I know, X. It's bizarre. Lifesaver says he introduced those two humans to Axl yesterday, and I suspect they must be behind this… or someone their working for. Apparently, someone saw the whole group talking together in one of the practice rooms." X frowned, drumming his fingers against the desk as he thought.

"Do you think this is a new Red Alert?" This disparate a group would actually be able to function well as an underground faction. Zero frowned at the thought.

"I thought of that, but some of them actually left notes to friends saying they couldn't explain but would be back soon. There are copies in that mess… but it sounded more like they think whatever their doing is temporary," Zero grinned without humor. "And too important to bother their commanding officers over."

"Well, we'll start looking for them," X decided. "But mostly to ask what their doing. They can't be Mavericks and don't seem to be a threat." Leaving the hunters like this had some penalties, but death was not among them. Zero nodded.

"I'll get right on it." He was suffering a burning need to know what in Hell Axl thought he was up to…

Elsewhere, at the same time…

"So, are we all here?" Axl glanced over his audience. The numbers had swelled to fifteen. Most of the returning souls had gravitated towards him, so they had been found in Hunter HQ. A few had been found in survivors of Red Alert, and Lyos was in the audience, looking conflicted. He knew he owed allegiance to Axl but his current life was imparting a desire to throttle the red haired Reploid.

"Except for the hidden ones," the same human woman who had fought against the Maverick purred. Her voice was like clotted cream, rich and thick. Her green eyes gleamed at him as he glanced at her.

He had been shocked to see her alive, until she had kindly explained her nature, in the gentle tone of someone speaking to a person with amnesia. She was a dhampir, the daughter of a powerful vampiress. Her history had been long when she first met him, and the magical pact that kept them all returning had enhanced her nature until she was simply unkillable. Or at least, she never stayed dead.

That enhancement would end as soon as they completed their mission, but Demona didn't seem to mind. She had been alive and awake the entire time since they had made their pact, and Axl suspected she wasn't entirely sane anymore.

Taglith had also existed since that time, but she had slept it away. Axl glanced over at her. A beautiful woman, her skin was the color of walnut shells and her hair was a delicately tinted green. She was a forest nymph, and when most of her kind had disappeared, she had remained ensconced in various trees. Her hands caressed the sword Axl had given her, and Axl's mind shied away from the part he knew she had agreed to play in their duties.

"Alright, everyone listen up!" The sound of conversation died down. "The first thing we have to do is find the hidden ones. A team of eight, including me, will take care of that." It was a very important and difficult task, so he didn't want to delegate it. "Shannon, Morton, you'll have to come. Work with Ysp on gathering up the cold weather gear you'll need." The two humans looked resigned. Their abilities would be needed for the awakening, but a trek deep into the mountains was not something they looked forward to. Ysp was a snake-like Reploid from the 17'th. "The rest of you… get started suppressing wild magical occurances. I'm leaving Duhallan in charge." The large black Reploid nodded to him without comment, and Axl nodded back. He had every confidence the formal lieutenant of the 0'th could keep everyone in line… and his memories informed him that in ancient days, Duhallan had been a general. There wouldn't be a problem.

"Let's get started."

A few days later, in the mountains…

"Why did we have to hide them here?" Lyos shouted over the growing howl of the wind. Axl conserved his breath and didn't bother to reply. Domina would do it for him, anyway.

Sure enough… "Because this place would take forever to wear away!" She shouted back to him. "And we wanted them undisturbed, remember?" Axl glanced back at her, then looked away quickly. The sight of her usual outfit in this setting was disturbing in the extreme. If she weren't already undead, she'd have frozen to death hours ago.

They were climbing the Himalayan mountains. Except for Domina and Taglith, every last one of them had lived a past life as a mountaineer for just this purpose. Axl was wearing that earlier identity as a Swiss mountain climber like a cloak over his thoughts, instead of just drawing on the skill. The last thing he wanted to do was screw up, and he was keenly aware of his own incompetence. Mavericks sometimes put their bases in arctic settings, but he couldn't think of any that had been put high in the mountains.

Lyos swore, but didn't comment further. Axl was actually quite sympathetic with his aggravation, but Domina was right. These mountains had been old when the magic had died, and they had lasted long enough, undisturbed.

"There'sss going to be a blizzzzard!" Ysp shouted up at them, hissing her sibilants. She was more than a little stressed as well, it seemed. "Where will we ssshelter?" Reploids could tolerate the cold better than humans, but there were still some extremely unpleasant side effects to being frozen. Axl preferred not to think about it.

"I… brought… a tent." Shannon gasped out, panting harshly. She was fit enough for a human scientist, but still not really up for this kind of thing. Still, she had fought through it gamely. Axl had thought she would need to be carried before the day was out, but she had proven him wrong. "Magic… tent!" Axl blinked at that. But… the mountains were very stable, or they would never have put the hideaway here.

He glanced up at the sky, and extended a few feelers. Then he swore. The blizzard would arrive in a few hours at most.

"Look for a good place to set up!" He ordered. "Will that tent blow away?"

"No! Magic… secured!" Axl nodded to himself. That would be the main magic of the tent… a sealing spell so it could be safely secured to any surface with no danger of blowing away. Most features they needed in a tent could be done with technology, although it was probably also magically condensed into a small package, and had automatic set up magic.

The sealing magic made finding a spot to put it much easier. The first outcropping it would fit on, in fact, although they set it up so the entrance was facing the mountain. That way, the two humans in their team could step outside for a bathroom moment without worrying about walking right off the edge.

Once they got into the tent, Axl spotted an immediate problem.

"Is this a four man tent? There are eight of us!" Shannon and Morton, their two humans, Taglith and Domina, who were semi-human, and Axl, Lyos, Ysp and Thorn making up the Reploid members. They were crowded just standing. Shannon flushed.

"I hardly had any power… I put the spell on the biggest tent I could!" She was red-faced and exhausted, so Axl decided to just deal with it. Chewing her out wouldn't make it better, anyway.

"Alright… let's pile up the packs in a corner." With some serious organization, they took up a minimal amount of space. The tent was starting to heat from several small generators placed around the perimeter of the tent. It was also illuminated with glowstrips on the ceiling, and Axl was glad of it. Four man or not, this was the best kind of tent on the market. "Screw the bedrolls. With the heating and body heat, we should be fine."

"We're going to be curled together like a nest of kittens." Lyos observed, sitting down. Ysp laughed, and sank to the floor of the tent in a graceful puddle. Thorn followed, spooning up behind her and whispering something in her ear.

The rest of them got sorted out, with a few snarls, muttering and even some flirting. Domina ended up sleeping on top of Lyos, who couldn't bear not sleeping on his back. The rest of them slept on their sides to minimize wasted space.

Soon, the tent was warm and more than a little rank. The stench of unwashed human mixed unpleasantly with the fainter, but more penetrating smell of equally unwashed Reploid. Domina's musk was more pleasant, but couldn't begin to cover up the other smells. Just to add a touch of the bizarre, Taglith added a fresh touch of mint and pine to the air. It smelled like someone had burned a couple of incense sticks and used air freshener in a vain attempt to keep the other smells under control.

But everyone was too exhausted to care. A muttered word from Shannon winked the lights out, and they slept…

The next day, the blizzard was still going full strength. Everyone wanted to keep going, but old memories of past lives said that mountaineering in a blizzard was the most idiotic of ideas.

Fortunately, the tent wasn't as cramped when everyone was sitting. And one person had considered the possibility of this kind of thing occurring.

"Argh!" Lyos grimaced as Ysp beat him handily at Tetris. She'd brought a small, portable game system complete with mini-screen and two controllers. "Do you have any other games?"

"Not too many for two people… let me sssee." She sorted through her cartridges. "Ha! I have that new game with Xss and Zero." She pulled it out with a small grin.

"I've always wondered about that," Morton said idly, propping himself against a corner of the tent. "Who gets the royalties for those games? X and Zero should be entitled to a big piece."

"They are," Axl said absently, doing a crossword puzzle. He'd also anticipated some idle time, although he hadn't thought it would start this soon. "X gives his part to the Maverick hunters… it's the only reason he lets them make the games and dolls and stuff at all. I don't know about Zero." The red hunter had some expensive tastes, so it was possible he kept it.

"Well, that should be fun." Lyos grabbed the cartridge and put it in. "I'll be Zero." Axl smiled as the team played. It felt almost like old times…


	9. Chapter 9

The world was oddly blurry. Axl blinked several times, and the blur resolved itself into a face.

Domina was looking down at him, her gleaming green eyes filled with amusement. She smiled, exposing canine teeth that were just a touch too long.

"You've gotten clumsier with age," she said, her voice full of laughter. Then she gripped his arm, helping him sit up.

"Clumsier?" Axl reached up to feel his head. "Ow!" Even with his helmet, he had a tender spot on the back of his head. "What happened?"

"Well, you found the entrance to the hidden place… with your head," she answered, amused. "Fortunately, it's a hard head. How are you feeling?"

"Awful, but I'll live." Axl levered himself to his feet, glancing around, and blinked. "Wow… how long was I out?"

They were in a cavern of green ice. It looked very unnatural, with smooth walls and a very flat floor. It looked like the inside of an egg. Several pieces of equipment had already been set up, which was rather surprising. Morton and Shannon were with them to handle that part, but it should have taken several hours. Had he been unconscious that long?

"Long enough." Domina said with a shrug. "We're almost ready for the ceremony." Axl nodded, standing up with a wince.

Looking into the walls, he saw the people they had come to free. The ice was clear enough to show them clearly. There were two tiny faeries, male and female, barely the size of his outstretched hand. One was a Windpuff faerie, and had wings that looked like they were made of milkweed down. The other was a more typical faerie with butterfly wings. In direct contrast to them was a giant of a man. He was wearing black, blue and red armor, and holding a tremendous axe in one hand. He had long back hair, and his face was regular, handsome, with bronzed skin, but tusks jutted from his lower lip. It was an interesting appearance. The last person in the wall was a tall, slender woman with short, spiky raspberry-blond hair and milk pale skin. Her clothing was tight fitting, cream colored leather armor. A scimitar was strapped to one hip, a whip to the other.

Axl frowned, though, as he noticed something else about the room.

"The ice is already cracking?" He stepped forward, delicately touching a spot just in front of the Windpuff faerie. The green ice was indeed fracturing, and as he watched, a few more cracks spiraled outward. "Damn. This isn't good, we're late."

"The pattern isss done." Ysp announced, and Axl turned back to look at the centre of the cavern. Ysp was carefully bottling up a vial of dragon drool. It had been stored within the cavern itself, and preserved with the same magic that held the people in stasis. The volatile liquid had been used to eat a pattern into the floor.

It was not a pentagram or anything else recognizable. If anything, it resembled a very complex mathematic figure, with equations running along the outer edges. In fact, they were equations written in symbols any mathematician would have recognized. Although he would have been at a loss as to what they were describing. Magic was like any other natural force in some ways, and math was a potent tool to describe and control it.

Axl stepped into the centre of the diagram, planting his feet carefully. He closed his eyes, and called up his personal power in a wave of green. The scent of fresh cut grass perfumed the air, and a cool minty flavor filled his mouth. He had always tasted and smelled magic.

With his new processing power, he could control the magic with equations. When he had been human, he'd had to prepare them ahead of time, but now he could create them on the fly. It was a vast advantage over his original body, although the power was derived from Gaia, not himself.

Axl shuddered as he spun the power out like spools of silk. It settled into the equations drawn into the floor, then activated in a rush. The walls in front of the figures cracked with a sound like shattering glass, then crumpled like rotten cloth. The figures inside collapsed, falling out through the holes.

They all watched, interested, as they began to stir.

"Ohh…" The woman pulled herself up, rubbing his face with one hand. Her name was Namali, Axl remembered. The two faeries fluttered weakly, pulling themselves out of the ice. Their names were utterly unpronounceable for humans, so they were just called Tip and Pip. The giant slowly pulled himself up, groaning softly, and looked at Axl with burning red eyes.

"Master?" He asked, his voice deep and guttural. Axl tilted his head, remembering… his name was Azak, and he was a troll/human hybrid. Axl had received his service in return for something only a wizard lord could do. He'd given the man a new face. Axl could vaguely remember what he'd looked like before that, and it had been very attractive to trolls. But Azak had the mind of a man, and had wanted to join human society.

"Welcome back, Azak." Axl stepped out of the pattern, and took his old friend's hand with a smile. "Welcome back." Tip and Pip fluttered over to him, one landing on each shoulder. Axl smiled at them, enchanted all over again by their delicate, immortal beauty. Namali stretched, and turned around to look at her broken prison. Tiny white, feathered wings fluttered on her back. Namali was an Alactus, a breed of creatures that had given rise to later myths about angels. The stories weren't at all correct, though.

"Well, we're ready." Axl smiled. "Domina can catch you up later." As a dhampir, Domina had some psychic abilities. She would be able to implant the modern knowledge they would need into them. "Let's go." It would take them quite a while to get out of the mountains, and time was of the essence.

Axl had a definite feeling they were late.

A week later…

"Well, finally." Duhallan wasn't looking too pleased when the group raggedly filed in. Axl lifted an eyebrow at him.

Their headquarters had changed a bit while they had been gone. A huge, holographic map had pride of place in the room. Axl had seen that type before, and knew it could display the globe and zoom in on specific areas. The Hunters used that sort of map to plan out strategies. As for the rest of the room, they had picked up ratty couches, chairs and tables. Not many people were in, though. Axl guessed that Duhallan was keeping everyone busy.

"Finally? Has something been going on that requires my attention?" Axl asked, as Shannon slumped into a couch with a groan. She and Morton had suffered the worst, and would need some time to recover.

"You might say that. The Twisted Lands are reasserting." Duhallan said sourly, and Axl winced.

The Twisted Land was not something he liked to think about. A relic of an ancient battle he had waged against a rival wizard lord, it had never healed despite his best efforts. In that long ago time, Axl had been forced to accept that some things just could not be fixed.

"I suppose that's not a huge surprise," Axl said with a sigh. "Last to go, first to come back. Where is it now?"

"A valley in Greece." Duhallan used the map to zoom in on the area. Axl could see the constantly changing patterns in the map, and the holographic generator flashed a warning about corrupted data. Duhallan shut that off with a snort. Everything about the Twisted Land was corrupted.

"Greece. Wonderful." Axl sighed. He was in for another long trip. "Is Allandra around?" She was a shuttle pilot at Hunter HQ, and they would need a shuttle to bring all the needed equipment.

There was no way the reassertion could be stopped. The forces behind the reappearance of the Twisted Land were just too immense. But without any attention, the effect could spread uncontrollably. They needed to make sure the valley made a smooth transition into… whatever it would become. There was no telling what that would be. The only certainty was chaos.

"Okay, I'll handle it. Namali, you want to come along?" If things went badly wrong, her powers could come in handy.

A little while later, they were in Greece. The valley was a barren, unpleasant place, uninhabited by any humans. Or any animals, for that matter. Even the plants looked sickly, as though they knew they were in a bad location for life. Axl and his team ignored the forbidding nature of the place, and set to work. After planting rods at the edges of the valley, they got down to the work of bringing magic back to the land.

"Get a load of THAT!" Axl said gaily, leaning over the edge of the floating platform. The railing held him in, but the platform itself was tilting alarmingly. "That's how it's supposed to look!"

The reintegration of the Twisted Lands was going perfectly. Pieces of stone were already breaking off and starting to float, but the effect was definitely under control. Allandra was strapped tightly into place on a chair, typing minute corrections into a terminal. The rods in place around the valley vibrated and glowed with each new correction.

The result was a carefully controlled destruction of reality. Which wasn't good, but was a thousand times better than the uncontrolled destruction that would have happened without the rods.

"Master, perhaps you should tie yourself in?" Namali offered, slightly concerned. Axl paid no attention.

"I remember that formation! Isn't it amazing how the morphic fields are reasserting themselves?" Axl had faith in Allandra's work, and no particular concern about problems. It had escaped him that Allandra didn't have that much faith, or she wouldn't have been wearing her harness.

"If the Master would please tie himself in?" Namali said a little desperately as a tremor went through the valley. She was busy tying a coil of rope around her own waist. She could fly, but in the Twisted Land gravity could become unstable, so flying wasn't the best alternative. "The valley is a bit unstable."

"Well, yes, it's supposed to be." Axl replied absently, leaning over a bit. "And down there-"

The sudden shockwave took him by surprise. The platform was tossed back and forth like a ship on heavy seas. Allandra concentrated grimly on her typing, and Namali was kept from falling overboard by her rope.

Axl wasn't so lucky, and yelped as he went over the side… then yelped as stinging pain lashed his chest. Namali's whip curled around him, flaying him through his armor but keeping him from falling.

"Master, may I respectfully say that you are an idiot?" Namali said respectfully, and Axl had to laugh.

"I guess I am. Sorry Nam!" She shook her head, and reeled him in hand over hand, until he could grip the railing and pull himself in. "Where's that rope you mentioned?" They would be here at least a day, and there was no point in repeating his mistakes.

A little while later, at Hunter HQ…

"X, we just picked up a massive energy surge." Alia frowned as she worked with her console. "It's very odd… not like anything I've seen before."

"Hm?" The blue hunter peered over her shoulder. He had stopped by to share some donuts with the navigator. "What on earth is that?" His experience was greater than Alia's, but he had never seen readings that far off kilter before either. "Maverick activity?"

"I don't know…" Alia chewed her lip. "It seems too powerful even for them. Some kind of natural phenomenon?" X frowned, looking at the readings.

"Perhaps… but it's all centered on that valley." He thought for a moment, then came to a decision. "I'll take Zero and go check it out. It might be important. So many weird things have been going on lately." Alia nodded.

"Good luck, X."


	10. Chapter 10

When X and Zero arrived at the valley, they didn't like what they saw.

"What… the… hell…?" X asked the world, somewhere between awed and appalled. The valley looked like it had been hit by a bomb, then suspended halfway through the resulting explosion.

Chunks of stone and dirt were floating, and moving about restlessly with no regard for gravity. The ground was… X looked down at the valley floor, and had to suppress nausea. He wasn't sure what the valley floor was doing, and his eyes and stomach were rebelling at his attempt to comprehend it. The best he could say was that the floor of the valley was close yet impossibly distant, small yet wide, and horrifically twisted.

"That is certainly one hell of a thing." Zero agreed, staring intently at the valley floor. X averted his eyes, wondering how Zero could bear it. "Let's see…" And Zero took a running leap into the valley.

"ZERO!" X grabbed at him too late. But Zero knew what he was doing, sort of; he was aiming for an island of stone. He was just about to activate his dash boots when-

He fell UP, and landed flat on his back on a different island. The utter astonishment on his face was almost worth X's brief moment of terror. X snickered, then started to laugh.

"Hey, it's not funny!" Zero tried to stand up, and swayed. "Which way is up? Dammit!"

"Get back here, Zero," X said when he managed to stop laughing. "I'd hate to think what might happen if you landed on the… whatever it is down there. Jump back." Zero grumbled, but did that. With advanced warning this time, he managed to twist in midair and land neatly on his feet beside X.

"Must be magnetized," he mumbled, a completely reasonable and totally inaccurate assumption. X nodded, but couldn't resist another look at the seething chaos at the bottom of the valley.

"Let's go around the valley. Maybe we'll be able to see more." Zero shrugged, but followed X as he dashed off.

They did find some very interesting things. Strange clouds were moving in between the little floating islands, and some of the islands had plants on them. Or rather, things that looked like plants. X guessed they had to be artificial constructs, since no normal plant would weep like a lost child or stretch out its branches towards them.

The first rod they found was putting out such a stream of raw energy that neither one of them dared go near it. X raised his buster, then hesitated. Whatever was going on here had been at it for a while. It was reasonable to think this rod was part of what was causing the trouble, but what would shooting it out do?

"Hey, X! Someone's on a platform over there!" Zero called, somewhat ahead. X blinked, and hurried to follow him.

"Axl!" X exclaimed as he saw the red-haired Reploid leaning over the edge of the platform. Axl looked up, surprised, then waved.

"I wondered when you'd be by!" He said cheerfully. Axl wasn't at all surprised someone had picked up the disturbance. They'd concealed it for a while, but it was a bit like trying to conceal an earthquake or a tornado. News couldn't help but leak out. Axl hopped out of the platform, sliding neatly down a rope to the ground. He walked over with a cocky grin. "How's it hanging, X?"

"It was doing better before you deserted," X said dryly, and had the satisfaction of seeing Axl wince. "So what are you doing here? And what is… this?" X's wave encompassed the valley, and Axl shrugged.

"It's a natural disaster. We're trying to keep it from spreading. This valley is toast, though." Axl turned to look at the devastation just as a muted explosion sounded from somewhere in the distance. "A good thing no one was dumb enough to live here."

"Axl, are you started another Red Alert?" Zero broke in. "Because if you are, we'll have to kick your ass, and I really don't want that." He'd always liked the spiky haired kid. Axl blinked, then grinned sheepishly.

"Oh, it's nothing like that! It's totally temporary. We just have to, um… help things along. Things like this." Axl waved towards the valley as X eyed him with faint disbelief.

"And what is 'this'?" X asked, glancing down at the valley floor again. "Besides a visual horror." It really made his eyes hurt. Axl shrugged, trying to look innocent.

"We-ell… it just IS. I can't really say much more about it." That got glares from Zero and X, and Axl raised his hands defensively. "I'm sorry, guys!"

In actuality, Axl could have told them the truth if he'd wanted to. And they would assume he'd completely lost it. Despite the evidence of the valley, they weren't ready to believe in magic and it was probably just as well. Magic came from the power of souls and could not be entirely eliminated, but disbelief was as potent a force as belief. Magic couldn't be destroyed by it, unlike gods, but it could be… lessened.

A tremor suddenly ripped through the valley, and Allandra called down. "Axl! I need help up here!" Axl dashed back to the platform, pulling himself up the rope as a crack suddenly extended from the valley. The ground trembled, and the crack slowly widened, running up towards X and Zero as purple smoke started to ooze from it…

Axl took over the computer terminal, typing with blinding speed. The ooze gradually disappeared, and while the crack remained, it was nothing but ordinary dirt.

"Axl, you are coming back with us to Hunter HQ," X said firmly from below. He wasn't sure what Axl was doing, but deserting was against all kinds of regulations.

"Not until I'm done this!" Axl called back. "You saw what happened there! If we stop working, this could spread!" X and Zero both looked at the crack.

"Kids got a point," Zero opined, and X sighed.

"Alright, we'll wait until you're done!" X crossed his arms, waiting impatiently as Zero decided to practice a few moves. X thought it wouldn't take long, but Zero was anticipating a long wait.

As it turned out, Zero was correct. It took three hours for the valley to settle into something that wasn't at all normal, but at least wasn't trying to escape its bounds. The floating rocks were still there, and the warped reality of the valley floor was still warped, but it had lost the feeling of movement that it had before. X still wouldn't have touched it on a bet, but it didn't look quite as deadly. He chewed his lip, trying to figure out what had caused it… he didn't really doubt Axl's contention that it was a natural disaster. The effect seemed too strange and immense to have been caused solely by Axl's rods.

"Well? Are you done yet?" Zero asked impatiently. He'd gotten bored with practicing by himself. Axl looked down at them, and nodded.

"Yes… but I can't go with you." X and Zero both stiffened. "Sorry I lied, but I don't have time to spend waiting for a court martial. Nam?"

"Yes, Master." The woman beside Axl leaped over the edge of the platform, and X blinked as she fluttered down. Her wings were ridiculously small, too small to house any normal flight systems. Perhaps she had anti-grav somewhere else. "I will delay them for you."

"The hell you will!" Zero exploded into motion, trying to dash past her… until her whip snapped out, snaring one of his feet and jerking him to a very abrupt stop. She drew her scimitar with her other hand, and it shifted into a spiked mace. She snapped Zero back with her whip, a casual display of surprising strength. X aimed his buster at her, and she smiled at him, a surprisingly gentle and understanding smile.

"Give up and go home," she said in a kindly tone. "You can perhaps defeat me, but not in time to catch Axl." The platform was already departing, moving surprisingly quickly. X scowled.

"Then we'll get answers out of you," he said as he fired on her. She dodged neatly, then parried Zero's beam sabre with her mace, lashing out with a foot to the groin. Zero's armor protected him, but it was still a painful blow.

The battle became heated after that. X was astonished by how capable the woman was, and wondered where Axl had dredged her up. She looked very human, and her armor looked like nothing but leather, but she had to be a Reploid and the armor had to be some kind of alloy. Humans might be able to match her speed, but not the flying on tiny wings. And her weapons weren't normal. The mace became a scimitar again, then a shield, and even a crossbow. X took a bolt to the leg and was left limping, after that. The whip was responding to mental commands and seemed to flay whomever it touched through their armor. Zero and X were both covered in painful welts.

In the end, though, the woman was no match for both of them. Her armor smoking, Zero slammed her to the ground and rested his sabre against her throat.

"Now," Zero said softly, threatening. "You'll tell us what we want to know." She shook her head, indifferent to the bloody scorch mark the motion raised on her neck.

"I think not," she replied, then called. "Master! Summon me!" Zero drew back his hand with a snarl, but before he could strike, she disappeared like mist.

All that was left was handful of gleaming, soft white feathers.

* * *

"So, what's next on the agenda?" Axl said brightly to Duhallan.

Even when he had been a wizard king, he'd depended on his subordinates for a lot of things. Especially when it came to tactics. Overall strategy was a different matter, but he'd taken care of that lifetimes ago when he'd made his deal with Gaia. Now that they were down to the brass tacks of the matter, it was better to leave the coordination to his long-ago general. He'd learned a long time ago that he was no military genius, and none of the lives he'd lived up until now had shown much improvement.

"There's nothing urgent. Just small things we can handle," Duhallan said briskly. He and the others were all working to control magical breakthroughs of various sorts. Everything from poltergeist phenomena to mystics that had suddenly discovered they really could float. Some of the problems they banished, some they destroyed, and others were gently contained so they could return at a later date. The world would eventually need mystics who could float, but the early birds were disturbing reality. And there was nothing inherently dangerous about floating. "And it isn't time for Domina and Taglith yet, is it?"

"No," Axl said with a shudder. He was almost afraid of Domina's place in this, and Taglith's sacrifice was just sad. "Maybe… Sobhana?"

"Hm." Duhallan turned the map, and Axl examined the indicators carefully. They were attuned to pick up mystical activity, in much the same way Alia could detect it, but with more sophistication. Alia only caught the backwash; this could detect far more. "Maybe. What do you think?" Duhallan could interpret the readings to a certain degree, but Axl was better. He frowned, reaching up to scratch his head.

"Well, it's still stable, but Sobhana is always stable. It looks like gates might be opening, so we should at least tie them down into set places." Axl grimaced. "Some people are going to wander in sooner or later, and if the gates are random, they might be trapped without food and water."

Sobhana was an ancient place, created by someone completely unknown long before Axl's first life. No one knew what it had originally been made for, but everyone knew what it was. A piece of reality from an alternate reality had been carefully snipped away, then layered over this one. The result had probably been unstable for a long time, but over the millennia it had settled in like glued paper. By now, it was probably impossible to detach. In his first lifetime, Sobhana had been a vast gathering place, a neutral zone where anyone could do commerce. It had also been very lawless. Axl vaguely remembered almost being killed his first time there.

Hiding the power of the world couldn't destroy Sobhana. It was like a rock in a well-worn grove; it no longer needed magic to hold it into place. Draining away the magic had cut the gateways to it, though, leaving the world entirely oblivious to the second reality laid over it. Food couldn't be grown in Sobhana, so anyone trapped there at the wrong time had… Axl tried not to think about it, but shivered. He really had been ruthless, in his first life.

He wasn't going to inflict that fate on anyone now, though.

"I'll take care of it," Axl decided. "I can handle it myself… call me if anything goes wrong, though, okay?"

"Right."

When Axl reached Sobhana, he found that he had been wrong. It wasn't a few people who had been trapped… it was a lot of people. And many had been killed.

Sobhana was currently congruent with a piece of China, near a major city. It was overlapping with several roads and a transit tube. The last had caused the worst trouble, with an entire train disappearing into a random gate. Axl shuddered at the thought. It would have entered Sobhana at the same speed, without the benefit of rails. The likelihood of survival for any of those people was slim to none.

Fixing the gates in place took quite some time. Getting the people out took longer, and was depressing. No one had starved, yet, although they were hungry, and Sobhana had its own water supply. But Sobhana itself was nothing but grey stone, ruined buildings and lichen. The ruined train and crushed cars from the roads did not add to the ambience. A few Reploids had survived the train wreck, and the other survivors carried them out through the gates Axl had stabilized. Soon, he was sure, the Chinese authorities would hear about this and begin a massive study of the gates. He wished them luck on that.

When Axl finally got back, he started work on some of the thornier problems that were beginning to crop up… like hunting down a necromancer.

Everyone else was very busy, so at first, Axl tried taking care of it alone with only his own tarnkappa. That didn't work out too well.

His first mistake was following her to a graveyard and trying to take her on at night. His second was in not realizing she had friends.

"Mistress… I smell fresh blood." Axl almost groaned as he saw the cadaverous man with the woman in black. A vampire. Things were progressing that quickly? And… why was any vampire saying something so utterly clichéd? The woman glanced around sharply, then uttered an unfamiliar word. Axl felt the stirrings in the currents of magic, and tried to shut them down… but he was a bit too late. The tarnkappa suddenly flared with energy, the magic that was meant to conceal it revealing it. Axl tossed it aside with a swear word.

The vampire came at him with a grin as the necromancer turned and ran. Now it was time for the vampire to make a serious mistake… his last. Axl was prepared for undead, even if he hadn't expected a vampire, and silver was a sovereign against them. It cost him a deeply slashed arm, but soon the vampire was a pile of ashes.

Axl bit his lip, then called for reinforcements. He'd need some help following the necromancer back to her hideaway.

Several hours later, Axl crossed his arms, leaning against the wall as he watched the necromancer rooting through the carpet.

The trail of opened graves and bizarre rituals had finally led to this mansion, and he was considering the best way to take care of things. She was smart enough to have given the zombies instructions to kill anyone who hurt her, and he hated fighting zombies. They tended to splatter. Lyos shifted uneasily beside him. He still wasn't used to the tarnkappa that was hiding him.

"What are you searching for, mistress?" Axl said in the deep, unctuous voice of the vampire he had killed. DNA copying was really coming in handy, when he couldn't just blast things to smithereens. The woman had accepted his return very calmly, assuming the vampire had eliminated the annoying Reploid that had hunted her down.

"A shrunken head!" Lyos looked slightly sick at that piece of information. "I could just use pile to flesh… but that's disgusting…" Axl suddenly dropped his disguise with a small grin.

"Have you tried using a divining rod?" He said conversationally, and she jerked up violently to glare at him.

"You… you little BASTARD! You're going to get it! Pile to FLESH!" Axl didn't flinch as the bizarre piece of magic hit him. The carpet, however, stirred. "No! NO! I meant flesh to stone, flesh to- AIIIiiiieeeeeeeeee………"

The carpet had turned into something reminiscent of a giant amoeba. The feeble digestive acids couldn't do much to Reploid feet, and Axl ignored the faint steam rising from then. The effect on human flesh in direct contact with the surface was far more spectacular. Fortunately, the thrashing and screaming stopped quickly.

"That's why you only use that spell on top of a metal table." He said conversationally to Lyos, who was staring at the spectacle.

"How on earth did you know that would work?" he asked, shaken, and Axl shrugged.

"I used to be a god, remember? C'mon, let's go." The police would have a hell of a time figuring out all the dead bodies and the pile of gore in this room…


	11. Chapter 11

Even as Axl and his followers worked to contain the worst of the magical outbreaks, more subtle powers were unfurling. Many were simply too small to register on Axl's screen. Others were indigenous to certain areas, or meshed well enough with reality that they were no threat to it. From Axl's perspective, they could safely be left alone.

Of course, that did not mean they were no threat to individuals. Nature was never kind, and like wild lions could be dangerous, so could magical beasts. In the time of Axl's first life, people had known how to deal with such things, but now it was different. And one such activity was about to attract some attention.

The ship moved slowly with the swells, as the two Reploid girls manned the controls.

The ship was almost entirely automated. A triumph of engineering, it took only seven people to control the massive tanker ship. Oil was not as vital to industry as it had once been, with the advent of cheap fusion power reactors. But it was still needed in a wide variety of ways, in everything from lubricants to fabrics.

The girls currently at the controls were the most junior of the crew, and the only females. One had long brown hair in a thick braid, while the other wore her golden hair short. Other than that, their armor was painted in the red and black colors of their company. The logo of Amerind Oil was emblazoned on their right shoulders.

One pulled out a candy bar, breaking it in half and offering the other piece to her friend, who accepted it silently. They were old, old friends and had done this shift a million times. They would do it a million more, and felt no need to fill up the hours with endless chatter.

Unlike most of the crew, they never complained and never wanted much time off. Contented little tortoises, they had never asked for promotion and never gotten any. They were perfectly happy with the quiet and calm of their midnight shifts on the tanker. It helped that they didn't really have to do anything except be there in case of emergency.

"Mmm… Mandy?" The girl with brown hair finally said, working a bit of nougat out from one tooth. "I t'ink… mrf… think that Attack of the Killer Tomatoes is on channel 134." One of the perks of working in the tanker was a satellite TV link and all the channels in the known world.

"I heard that thing got a Rotten rating from Rotten Tomatoes." Her friend said after some cogitation. The brunette snickered.

"Rotten for a tomato movie? Well, are we doing something else important?" she asked. Her friend shrugged, and turned on the TV. For a long time, they watched the movie in silence.

"Do you hear something?" The blonde suddenly said. The brunette stopped chewing on a celery stick.

"Yeah, I was eating a celery stick?"

"No, not that… it sounds like singing…" The blonde turned off the TV, and they both listened intently.

It was singing. A very sweet, melodic crooning. They both settled into their chairs, entranced by it…

The blonde suddenly jolted bolt upright. "Ohmigod I fell asleep!" She looked around frantically, utterly horrified as she saw the chronometer. "Two hours! Hairy flipping gods, wake up!" She frantically shook her brunette partner, who woke up with a snort.

"Wha… ha?" Then she blinked as reality came back. "…We were asleep?" She paled as that fact sank in. Sleeping on duty was one of the things you Did Not Do. At the very least, one person was to stay awake while the other catnapped. Both at once… "We could be dismissed!" They both exchanged horrified looks. There was no other conceivable job where they could spend all night basically doing… nothing at all, and receive free food, lodging and a tiny bit of pay. If they lost their jobs, it would be the worst trauma of their lives.

"Wait… wait. No one knows we fell asleep." Relief suddenly bloomed in the blonde's face as she checked all the monitors. "And nothing happened. We just don't say anything and no one will know." The brunette huffed a sigh of relief.

"Oh, thank god!" They both diligently turned to their monitors, entirely forgetting the strange bout of sleep.

Until it came time for someone to relieve them.

"Where is Amleric?" The blonde was fidgeting. "I want to go to bed…" They were on twelve hour shifts. Four of them manned the control room, two at a time, while the other three Reploids tended to various mechanical chores around the ship in eight hour shifts. So basically, all the two of them did was work and sleep. Since they could do almost anything during work, that was an equitable arrangement.

But that meant they needed their sleep. When the relief was late, it was a terrible imposition. Usually, everyone was prompt.

"Why don't you stay here, while I go look for them?" The brunette offered. One of them needed to stay in the control room at all times. The blonde nodded, and her companion started looking for the others.

She found… nothing. A rather creepy nothing. There were parts scattered at one of the engineering stations, as though the Reploid stationed there had just abruptly gotten up and left. She also found some cold food in the quarters of one of her relief. Breakfast, the sort of thing he would have been eating three or four hours ago… he always woke up well before his shift started. It was half finished.

But there was no sign of struggle or violence. Nothing at all. She finally went back to the control room.

"Well, where are they?" The blonde demanded impatiently, thinking longingly of a hot meal and a comforting recharging capsule. The brunette ignored her, keying the emergency transmission button.

"Control? We have a really strange problem…"

* * *

A day later, the two Reploids were sitting in Maverick Hunter HQ, waiting nervously to be interviewed.

A tanker ship only needed seven people, but it did need seven people, so when the situation was reported a replacement crew had been flown out… with a few soldiers to keep them company. No one understood what had happened, but it was peculiar and disturbing enough to warrant some serious investigation.

X stepped into the room, and the two girls immediately riveted their attention to him. X blushed lightly. Lifesaver had already checked them both over thoroughly, and informed him that they were clean of any infection and exactly what they appeared to be… a pair of class B female Reploids, of the Akisha line, which basically provided ornamental but competent desk workers and secretaries. Just from that, X had guessed they would be attractive, but it was still startling to see two very pretty girls looking at him with wide eyes.

They were each pretty in very different ways. The brunette girl reminded X vaguely of Iris, although her skin tone was darker and her eyes were a glorious purple, shading to gold along the outer edges. Her body was very buxom, and the uniform/armor she was wearing flattered her.

The second girl, the blonde one, had almost identical features, but eyes of a dark blue shot with green, like the scale of a fish. The Akisha line was prone to a certain sameness of features, but eye color was typically highly individual. Her body type was completely different, however, lean and slender where her companion was lush.

X took a seat across from them, and smiled gently at them both. Signas had already interrogated them… and reduced them both to incoherent tears with his harsh, pointed questions. Zero was out, so it had fallen to X to question the girls. He could have delegated the task, but the whole story was so weird that he wanted to get it straight from them.

"Could you both tell me what happened, in your own words?" He asked, and the girls exchanged glances. Finally, the brunette spoke up.

"Um, well… sir…" she said nervously, and X interrupted.

"Just call me X, please," he said with a smile, which seemed to reassure her. She gave him a tentative smile.

"X, we were monitoring the ship as usual and… the only strange thing that happened during the night was singing." X nodded. He'd already heard about that. Some people were already speculating that it was a new Maverick weapon.

"What kind of singing? Could you reproduce it?" The girl looked startled at that question, while the blonde looked a little intrigued.

"Yes, I think so. It went sort of like this…" She started to hum, and X listened intently. The song seemed to be in a minor key, with a haunting tune, but it told him nothing. Except… the other girl was also humming, and seemed to be enjoying the reprisal.

X was loathe to stop them… the song was really quite pretty, and for some reason, he wanted to hear more. But he had work to do, and finally spoke. "So, what happened after you heard that song?" Signas had insisted they weren't telling the truth about this part. The two girls simultaneously looked guilty, and X could see why Signas was sure. They were bad liars.

"We… just kept manning the ship." One said lamely, and X shook his head.

"Honey," he said kindly, concealing the fact that he couldn't remember their names. "We really don't care about your company. Nothing that you say will go beyond this room, so please, tell me what happened?"

"You swear?" The blonde said, in a soft, hesitant voice. "If… if they find out, we'll lose our jobs. And we really like our jobs. We don't have to do anything at all." The brunette nodded vigorously.

"We just watch TV and stuff," she said, and X stared at them both, a little appalled. He knew that there were people like this, both humans and Reploids, who might as well not have any free will for all they used it. He always thought it was a little creepy.

"No, I won't say anything," he said soothingly. "Please, what happened?"

"We… fell asleep. The music put us to sleep. We didn't wake up for two hours." The brunette looked at him pleadingly. "But it wouldn't have mattered, really… we'd never have left the control room anyway." X nodded. She was trying to justify herself, assure herself that their failure really hadn't meant anything. He wasn't sure of that, but he was sure it wasn't their fault.

"Thank you, ladies," he said politely, standing up. The information they had been hiding wasn't particularly useful, but it was interesting. He could only guess that the Mavericks weapon put its enemies to sleep, and the others had been kidnapped.

He would go investigate that area tomorrow.

* * *

X frowned, checking over the profiles of the Reploids on the tanker. He'd meant to go out right away… but something had occurred to him. What had made those two girls special? Why had they been spared?

The rooms to the control room they had been working in had not been locked in any way. And even if they had, some of the others had been in their private quarters when the singing had started. Why had whoever had put the girls to sleep spirited the others away, but left the females?

…Females?

X suddenly blinked as the answer came to him. They were the only girls on the ship. All the other crew had been males. Maybe this weapon, whatever it was, affected men differently then women?

That was a distinct problem. X had never really gotten much use out of it, but he was definitely a man. He could disable his hearing, but maybe it would be wise to take a female Hunter along with him.

It couldn't hurt.


	12. Chapter 12

"Oh my god," X muttered to himself, quietly suffering. The coast guard team, Reploids and humans in black armor and matching uniforms, showed every sign of enjoying the trip. They had volunteered to man the small gunboat X had borrowed from the coast guard. X had known better than to think he could steer it himself. His knowledge of naval matters was somewhere on the bottom of the ocean and so was his ability to cope with it.

Fortunately, the heavy weapons battalion practiced with naval weapons as well as land based ones, so the Hunters had provided that much of his backup. A mixed crew was manning all the weapons diligently, ready to take care of any Maverick who dared pop up. Last but not least, two girls, one from his own unit and the other from Zero's, were accompanying him.

Everyone on the ship was female, except for him. X had been a little embarrassed when he'd had to make the request for only female crew, but everyone had complied cheerfully when he'd explained. The only real issue had been whether or not he should be along. Signas had finally decided that the others could keep him safe, as long as they stayed awake, and it would be worthwhile to see exactly what effect this Maverick weapon had on a male.

They knew, from the testimony of the girls, that the sound would take a few moments to affect the women. They would have enough time to shut down their audio receptors… except for X and one of the crew, who were going to be monitored to see exactly how they reacted.

Still, when X finally heard the music, it almost got him. The sound was so beautiful… it made him feel so wonderfully peaceful. And it promised things. It promised peace and love, if only he followed it… X walked towards the rail, and started to climb over…

Until rough hands jerked him back, and he cried out. Why were they keeping him from it? From that loving warmth?

There was a quicksilver pain across his face, then another. And someone was shouting in his ear, almost drowning out that glorious sound.

"X, turn off your audio receptors! Turn them off! NOW!" X wavered, blinking in pain. Yes, he was supposed to do that. He wasn't quite sure why anymore, but…

He mentally deactivated the circuits, then blinked as clarity returned.

"What happened?" He glanced around, and saw the other crewmember who had kept her audio circuits on lying on the deck, asleep. The woman across from him shrugged, and her reply came as a text message on their communications circuit. The humans in the crew were all wearing ear protectors and holding datapads to let them send and receive messages.

_She passed out and you starting trying to jump overboard. Michele managed to grab you, and Spice slapped you a few times. Didn't really bring you out of it, though. We were going to tie you up if you didn't shut off your audios._ She grimaced, then looked towards a nearby island. _It must be coming from there, sir. The tanker passed by close to it, too._ X nodded, his eyes narrowing.

_Alright._ He glanced down at the girl, who was being shaken awake. We'll start circling around the island, with one of you sometimes checking to see how loud the sound is. It was the best idea he had for how to find the one making it.

It didn't take them too long to locate the source of the sound. It helped that once they were alert for it, brief exposure to the music wasn't enough to make the girls pass out. X didn't dare activate his own audio sensors.

The source was a cave by the shore. It was full of water, but the ceiling was too low to admit the boat. X looked down into the water, and grimaced. It was brackish and full of weeds. Swimming in it would not be fun. Walking on the bottom would be even less fun, and wearing their armor, they would have to. Reploids were buoyant enough to float without armor, but they sank like rocks with it on.

X and the two girls started into the water, while the rest of the team stayed on the boat. X was confident he could deal with whatever was here with their help. They were the best female Hunters HQ had to offer.

The bottom of the seafloor was as gooey as X had feared. Seaweed clutched at them, but couldn't hold on. They slogged through, eventually coming out into the cave, their legs coated in mud. X coughed at the horrible smell.

Then frowned, realizing the smell was only partially from the mud. The two girls were grumbling, helping each other pick seaweed away from their armor. One of them had long blonde hair, which needed even more attention. X ignored them both in favor of sniffing the air, even when one of them carefully pulled seaweed away from his armor.

X's sense of smell was better than the average human, although nowhere near the level of a dog. He frowned, trying to separate the different scents. There was fish, oil, rot… and a peculiar smell that X associated with Reploid bodily fluids. Oily, but sweetish. He grimaced. It was a smell he'd encountered many times before, but he never liked it.

_Let's go._ X text messaged the two girls, who left off their grooming. The one from Zero's unit ignited a beam sabre while the other readied her arm cannon. They slipped deeper into the cave, watching warily for enemies.

Enemies were hard to find, but dead bodies weren't. They found the first one not too deep into the cave. A male Reploid with his throat torn out. X recognized the armor color… it was one of the crew from the tanker.

The cave became stranger further inside, as well. Phosphorescent fungi gave off a great deal of light, and strange crystals imbedded in the walls also gave cool illumination. The floor of the cavern was wet and slimy, providing treacherous footing. They gradually found more bodies, and it was clear many small vessels had fallen victim to the Mavericks, the victims dying unnoticed. They found the remains of several humans. X hesitated, then knelt down beside a relatively fresh body as the girls stood guard. Unlike the Reploid bodies, it looked partially eaten. But why would a Maverick want to eat humans? Although technically, they could…

X shuddered at the thought, and stood again. The cavern widened into a much larger chamber, and they finally found the source of the singing.

X was astonished and repulsed. There were two Mavericks, lying in a pool of water at the center of the cavern. It was spring fed and clear, lapping around the scales of the two creatures inside it.

They looked like women, but only partially so. Their upper bodies were those of women, but scaled and diseased looking. One was wearing a collar of cloth, and shreds trailed down between her full breasts. The other was wearing the remnants of armor, and as X watched, she reached up and clawed some of it away, ripping it free. Their skins were fish belly white, and their eyes were a luminescent green as they looked at him.

One slid beneath the water, and X gasped as a long, sinuous tail emerged from the water. It was perhaps three times as long as the rest of her body, and it reminded him of a water snake.

"Who are you?" One of the girls demanded, activating her audio receptors. But the two Mavericks showed no sign of understanding, and the girl swore, turning off her receptors again as they started to sing.

_Retire them quickly and neatly._ X instructed the other two. This looked easy, but he was willing to bet it wouldn't be. As he watched, one of the creatures eased herself out of the pool, moving surprisingly quickly. Her snake-like lower body adapted to the ground easily, propelling her swiftly across the cavern floor. She opened her mouth to sing again, and X caught a glimpse of pointed shark teeth. Her mouth was full of them, more than one row. _Careful of their teeth._

The battle was vicious. The scales on their bodies seemed to protect them like armor, and the one with the cloth collar lashed out with her lower body, coiling the girl from Zero's unit in her tail. The girl slashed down, raising a terrible wound on the unprotected tail, then screamed as the Maverick bit her on the arm. Then X's buster hit the Maverick in the side, and she reared back, nearly tearing the Hunter's arm off but letting go.

The other Maverick was clumsier, and her lower body seemed somehow malformed to X. It wasn't as long as the first, or as agile. And neither of them had any weapons beyond their teeth and long, sharp claws. X and the girl from his unit overcame the clumsier Maverick just in time to see the girl from Zero's thrust her beam sabre through the first ones chest. There was a terrible smell of burning flesh, and the Maverick slumped, taking the sword with her.

X blinked, and suddenly sniffed the air. The smell wasn't right. It wasn't…

_Everyone, turn on your audio receptors._ The creatures were dead, and X didn't want to speak this way any longer than he had to. He walked over to the dead creature, kneeling down beside her as the girl from his unit staunched the other one's bleeding. The wound was deep and painful, but not life threatening.

X sniffed again, smelling burnt pork, then tentatively touched the scaly flesh. He shuddered as he realized that his senses weren't playing a trick on him. At one time, this "Maverick" had worn regular clothing. And she wasn't a Maverick at all.

But what had turned a human into this?

* * *

When Lifesaver looked over the two bodies, he confirmed X's tentative hypothesis.

"This was once a human." Lifesaver lifted up a hand, then let it drop back to the examination table. "I could use the help of a specialist in human autopsies. This isn't really my field."

"You'll get one," X promised, turning to glare at some Hunters that were peeking into the repair bay to get a glimpse of the gruesome remains. He didn't appreciate the morbid curiosity, although it was probably inevitable. Everyone had heard about how this human had nearly torn off a teammates arm with her teeth, and resisted several hits from X's buster without any armor. Added to that, she looked like something out of a horror movie. It was guaranteed to make anyone curious. "Do you have any idea who she is?"

"And how would I know?" Lifesaver gave X a scalding look. "Check her dental records?" X tried to maintain his patience, reminding himself that the medic had a lot of things on his hands.

"How about her fingerprints?" He said reasonably, and Lifesaver shrugged.

"This isn't a crime lab, X. I don't have any equipment to take fingerprints and send them for identification-"

"Lifesaver, WHAT is your problem today?" X finally burst out. "Send someone down to admissions! We take fingerprints and do security checks on every human we allow into this building!" That was routine. Lifesaver stopped, a startled expression on his face.

"Oh. I hadn't thought of that. Rory! Go down to admissions." One of his assistants, a older human, immediately nodded and dashed off. "I can tell you more about the Reploid."

"Thank you," X said wearily as Lifesaver took him to the second corpse. This one had been opened up and examined, unlike the first. Lifesaver knew his limitations, and conducting a human autopsy was beyond him. Exploring a Reploid, though, was right up his alley.

"I believe she was originally an old Sim model, class B." Lifesaver threw up the schematics of an original of that line, then the schematics of the female he had examined. X nodded… he could see the similarities. Although there were plenty of differences. "What happened to cause this, now, that's hard to say. It appears the nanities in her body began restructuring her to an alien template. Also, the semi-organic components have undergone a strange growth and mutation. Her lower body in particular is mostly organic. We've been able to locate no virus or agent that would account for these changes."

"And her vocal weapon? How does it work?" X asked intently. Lifesaver grimaced, raising an empty hand.

"We don't know. We've checked her over thoroughly, but while her vocal unit is capable of producing sounds that will carry over vast distances, there is nothing unusual about it. I can't explain the effect it had on you." Lifesaver poked one of the scales. "I can't explain these, either. They seem to be some kind of unknown, organic polymer. Her teeth and claws are also made of an unknown substance."

"Hm." X looked at the body thoughtfully. "Do you think you could figure out who she is?"

"We already have." X would never have credited Lifesaver with a sense of drama, but it seemed he was wrong. Lifesaver threw up the data onto the screen, and X blinked as he saw a pretty Reploid with dark purple hair smiling from the screen. She wasn't stunning, but her face was friendly and had character. "Her name was Wyna. She was built to be a caretaker to an elderly woman. She served there until the woman died, and inherited a share of the estate. Since then, she's been traveling. We got this picture from the old woman's son." X nodded… there was a happy old woman in the picture, with a face like a wrinkled apple but wearing a wide smile. A middle-aged man was also in the picture, most likely the son who had sent the picture to Lifesaver.

"Interesting… do you think the second one could be a friend?" Lifesaver frowned, but nodded.

"It's possible. We can't say for certain, though. Apparently, Wyna kept only sporadic contact with the surviving family and they knew nothing of her personal life, so they could tell me nothing about that."

"Well, tell me if you find out anything about the first one." There was nothing more to be learned here. Lifesaver nodded.

"Just find me someone to do an autopsy on this one, before she starts to smell worse than she already does." X winced at that, but nodded. Both the bodies had a fishy odor, and the first was worse. "Maybe we should send her down to the morgue, instead of doing it here."

"I'll ask about that right away," X promised. He wanted answers very badly.

* * *

Elsewhere…

The two female Reploids from the tanker ship were standing by the rail of a new ship. They had been accepted back by their company, and placed on a new vessel doing the same job. Not many people enjoyed being almost completely inactive, so it hadn't been hard to find a place for them.

The crew of the vessel was not familiar with either of them, so the way they had nothing to say to anyone but each other did not seem strange. Nor did all the time they spent at the rail, looking into the water… although it was a bit peculiar, when one of them used a spear to try to catch fish. But everyone had hobbies.

This night, though, the ship was blown off course. It was a very stormy night, and no one noticed the quiet splashes off the stern of the ship. Who would jump into the ocean in a storm?

But they did notice the empty control room the next day. It didn't seem worthwhile reporting it to the Maverick Hunters… the two females had obviously been traumatized by their experiences. A pity, but only worth reporting to the port authorities, who received it as a slightly odd missing persons case, and nothing more ominous.

And so things went on.


	13. Chapter 13

Azak grunted, snarling softly to himself as Reploid vital fluids dribbled over his armor. The corpse he was carrying was old, old… but Reploid vital fluids took longer to turn viscous than human blood. The dead boy in his arms was still oozing.

They were deep in the heart of Maverick territory, in what had once been Earthsaver II. The ruined city had been left to rot like an impaled corpse. Dead bodies, dead cars and crumpled towers were everywhere. The human bodies exposed to the air had mostly skeletonized, while the ones buried in the shattered buildings were more preserved. Azak knew because he'd been digging many of them up.

"Why did we get this shit job?" Lyos complained, to Azak's annoyance.

"Because someone must do it," he rumbled, his voice deep and rumbling. "And we are strong." Lyos snorted, but didn't comment as they dumped the bodies in the square they had cleared.

They had no fear of Mavericks stumbling over them. Ordinarily, that would have been a very definite danger. They haunted the ruins of dead cities like maggots in rotting meat, but lately, even Mavericks were afraid to enter Earthsaver II. The more sensitive suffered a creepy feeling, a sense of malice and something dark and unknown surrounding them. The very sensitive had waking nightmares, sensing, dimly, the truth of the matter. Their dreams would have told them, if they could have untangled the symbolism and faced the heart of it. But there were few sensitive Mavericks, and less who could ever understand what was happening. All they knew was that something did not want them here.

And it was taking active steps to keep them out. Maverick patrols had developed a very nasty way of disappearing, and reappearing in all the wrong places… and conditions. Sigma had finally stopped any patrols when a Maverick General had turned up dead, without a mark on him… but his fusion generator entirely drained. They had heard rumors that Sigma was considering bombing the place, in case there was a resistance cell hidden in the ruins. As far as they were concerned, he could go right ahead after they left. The dead wouldn't care about a bit of extra defilement.

Azak dumped a second corpse in the square, then scowled down at the young Reploid female. She had taken a plasma shot through the chest, and her weak, civilian armor had been no help at all. In life, she had likely been pretty. Her hair was a sun-kissed golden blond, she possessed perky, mechanical cat ears and her eyes were grass green under their coating of dirt. And she appeared to be looking straight at him, her unblinking eyes fixed on his face.

Azak turned away, going to retrieve another body. So he didn't see the green eyes following him. The head could not move, but there was enough of something to animate those pupils, and keep them centred on him until he was out of range.

Not that it would have surprised him. In fact, he would have been supremely unsurprised if he had noticed. He knew what was happening here.

* * *

"So, have you figured out who she is?" X kept his gaze averted from the dead woman. Her body had been opened up by the coroner like… a filleted fish. Several specialists in physiology, marine biology and even a medical doctor had all looked at her. Their reactions had ranged from horror to bafflement, and they had dozens of theories about what had happened to her, but no solid facts. Lifesaver had assisted them, interested in expanding his skill with humans. Now he was standing in front of X, the formal report of their findings in hand.

"Yes, actually. We had to check every database, but she was once a police officer and her prints were on file." Lifesaver took out a picture. It was a full color glossy, obviously staged and probably provided by her family. It showed a middle-aged woman who was pretty, in the way of someone who had been beautiful before age had started taking a toll. X blinked at the picture, then glanced at the body, focusing on the face.

"She looks younger," he observed. The dead mermaid-woman did indeed look much younger than the picture would suggest. There were no lines on her face, no hints of age spots. If you overlooked the teeth, fish-belly skin and unnatural green eyes, she was actually quite beautiful.

"Indeed," Lifesaver said sourly. "Probably because, from what we can tell, something was overwriting her DNA. We suspect a viral agent, although we could find no trace of it in her body." X looked at him, startled.

"Sigma has never used biological warfare before," X protested. It was actually a little strange that Sigma had never tried it. There was speculation that he had no Maverick scientists capable of it, but X doubted that. Engineering viruses and bacteria was actually quite easy. Perhaps the Maverick Virus had some pre-programmed limits… biological warfare had been banned for a long time… or perhaps there was some tiny speck of the original Sigma still in there, the Sigma that had once commanded the Maverick Hunters. Perhaps.

"I doubt Sigma had anything to do with this. It's entirely too roundabout." Lifesaver briefly examined the woman, then shrugged. "Also ineffective. These creatures are moderately dangerous at best." X had to nod. Once they had gotten past the vocal weapon, killing the creatures had not been too difficult.

X was leafing through the report, walking back to HQ, when Alia's call had come.

_X, we're detecting some really strange energy emissions from what's left of Earthsaver II._

"Alia, that's deep in Maverick territory." X said with a grimace. Any attempt to investigate would be dangerous in the extreme.

_I know, but this is so terribly unusual… Signas wants you and Zero to investigate. I think this could be related to Axl._ That news arrested X, and his eyes narrowed as he snapped the report shut.

"Oh? How so?"

_The emanations are similar to the last incident when you saw him, and seem to be almost as powerful. If what he's doing has to do with these kind of power signals, he could be there._ X hmmed softly to himself. That conclusion was a bit of a stretch, but it was a lead.

They had been looking for Axl for weeks, with very limited success. There were several reports OF him, mostly associated with strange phenomena, but it was nearly impossible to predict what he would be doing next. X winced as he thought about all the reports from China. Not that Axl had hurt anyone, but a lot of people had died. And no one could figure out exactly what was up with that strange place, or how Axl had created stable entrances to it. The scientists were mumbling things about alternate dimensions and twisted spacetime, but it all amounted to 'we don't have a clue'. A lot of people wanted very desperately to talk to Axl.

X wanted to speak to him rather desperately too. Strange things had been happening all through the world, and he was absolutely certain Axl could tell him what was going on, if he chose to. So…

"Alright. Tell Zero to meet me there."

* * *

"Ho, hum, what a ghastly place. Dynamo, you do know how to pick your assignments." Dynamo grimaced as a bit of stone crumpled under his hand. "Yick. Disgusting place." Dynamo had been tapped to go check out Earthsaver II. After the loss of so many patrols and a Maverick General, Sigma wanted to send out someone a bit more clever and expendable than most of his Mavericks. That meant Dynamo, and he was charging Sigma through the nose for it.

Dynamo wasn't too worried about the expendable part. He was pretty sure the only reason Sigma hadn't gotten information yet was because his Mavericks were stupid as hell about running away. It was easy to put up a communications jammer, and most Mavericks were totally unable to turn around from a fight. So communications loss + superior forces no news for Sigma. Although why a resistance cell would be lairing in some place so gruesome…

It was a funny place, too. Dynamo looked up at the sky with a frown. It was heavily overcast. There seemed to be a really weird fog formation constantly over this place. Sigma was pretty good at giving info for assignments… he wanted Dynamo to succeed… so he'd mentioned the weird energy readings and cloud cover. Some of the more meteorologically inclined Mavericks were wasting their time on it, apparently. Earthsaver II sat at the banks of a river, so fogs weren't unusual, but this was still weird.

Dynamo cocked his head to one side as he heard voices, and slinked towards them. Who else would be here? Sigma had pulled out all his patrols.

"Oh ho!" Dynamo murmured with a grin as he saw blue and red armor. "Someone else is explor-ing…" This would give Sigma fits, but Dynamo didn't much care. He could follow the Hunters and let them trigger any problems… hell, maybe they were meeting with a resistance cell! Sigma would love to have that information and-

Dynamo yelped far too loudly as something SHOVED him. The brutal push came as a complete surprise, and he went tumbling out, to X's and Zero's surprise. The two Hunters stared at him as Dynamo started to swear.

"What in hell?" Dynamo turned around to glare at the surroundings, trying to spot what had shoved him… but he couldn't see anyone. There was a surprised gasp from behind him, and Dynamo whirled to confront X and Zero. Shit, his cover was SO blown! Zero was looking… surprised, while X was looking… grossed out?

"Dynamo, you've got some… stuff on your back." Dynamo blinked at X, then reached behind himself to touch his back and-

Felt something wet oozing under his fingers. He glanced over his shoulder, and to his utter disgust, saw that someone had smeared some MEAT on him. Old meat, full of maggots and squirming…

"Argh, SHIT! Get it off!" Zero laughed at his evident distress, and actually helped out, using a piece of stone to scrape the mess away from him. Dynamo put up with it… he really wanted that crap off him. Blood was one thing, but rotting meat? "Christ, who PUSHED me? Who would do something this sick?" It was totally bizarre.

"How about you tell us why you were watching us, instead?" Zero said conversationally, and Dynamo sighed. His cover was blown, but it wasn't a total loss. He could just lie to Sigma about how he'd gotten the info.

"Well, ya see, Sigma's kinda interested in why all his patrols go missing. So, Dynamo to the rescue!" Dynamo spread his hands with a smile. "So, mind if I tag along?"

"Can we get rid of you, short of shooting you?" Zero said wryly. Not that he would object to shooting Dynamo in the head, but it might distress X a bit. He had gotten a bit fond of Dynamo, in a bizarre way, probably because the mercenary could make him laugh. Dynamo looked thoughtful.

"Well, if you tied me to a tree and beat me like a piñata I MIGHT be a touch discouraged…" Dynamo said with a grin. "Also, whips and chains would be a little off putting. Well, unless X did it, then it'd be sexy." X blushed, then laughed.

"Pervert! Okay, you can come along." X didn't care for the way Dynamo would work for anyone who would pay him, but that couldn't stop him from liking the blue-haired mercenary personally. And he was pretty sure that Sigma would learn nothing useful from Dynamo's report on this place. There was no resistance cell, only something weird…

Zero's eyes went wide as he saw something blue-white flash through the air, and he pulled out his saber, activating it. X and Dynamo both turned around just in time for the light to glow flashing through the air, straight for Dynamo. Zero swung at it, but missed, and it passed directly through the mercenaries' chest. Dynamo gasped in surprise and horror, then collapsed to his knees. X knelt down beside him, gripping his shoulders as he curled up, shivering violently.

"Dynamo! Are you alright? What happened?" X asked him, concerned. Dynamo shook his head, wincing in pain.

"My generator… it drained me." He gasped out. "So cold…" He felt horribly chilled. Like a finger of ice had gone right into him.

"It's coming back!" Zero shouted, and X jumped up as the light arrowed back and put himself in between it and Dynamo. The light abruptly slowed, then stopped in front of them. At first it was formless, and reminded X of an ancient story he had read, about a demon creature called Willowisp. But then it stretched out, and assumed a form.

It was like looking at a hologram, but one that wavered and pulsed oddly. To X's horror, the light took the shape of a little girl, no older than ten. A horribly maimed girl, her left arm torn away and his face and body brutally burned. She looked at X with large, soulful eyes, then started to cry. It was as if the sound was coming from very far away, and X stared at her in shock. _A ghost?_ The little girl pointed at Dynamo and X accurately interpreted her expression… a combination of anger and questioning.

"He's not really that bad. He only works for Sigma sometimes," he reassured the little girl, who looked at him with sad eyes. "He doesn't kill people." That was a bit of a stretch, but Dynamo really didn't kill defenseless civilians. The girl seemed to consider that for a moment… then she slowly disappeared, fading into nothing.

"Holy crap," Dynamo said, his voice cracking, as he stared at the place the girl had stood. "What was that?"

"A ghost, it looked like," Zero said with admirable calm. "There's all kinds of weird shit going on lately."

"That's an understatement." X muttered, and tensed. "There's more of them." He could see faint lights in the distance, and he didn't think it was from flashlights. "Come on, Dynamo." He helped the mercenary up, who coughed and massaged his chest.

"Thanks, X. I owe you." Dynamo really did appreciate it. "God damn. That must be how that Maverick General bought it." He shuddered at the thought of being invaded so completely by that terrible coldness. Just the touch he'd gotten was more than enough.

"What Maverick General?" X questioned as they headed towards the greatest concentration of power. Zero glared around warily, at the shifting lights of soulfire. Some got close enough for him to almost make out features, but then they darted away. Perhaps the ghost girl had told them something?

X suddenly stopped abruptly, and Dynamo almost ran into him from behind. "Huh?" The mercenary looked over the smaller Reploids' shoulder, then blanched. "Holy shit! That's disgusting!" Someone had gathered up hundreds of dead bodies, dumping them in this courtyard. The scent of rot was heavy in the air, and Zero coughed at the cloying smell.

"No more disgusting than anything that's happened here," X said quietly. "At least they were dead before this was done to them." X delicately stepped through the field of bodies… then suddenly staggered, looking down. "…Zero? Could you maybe pull me back?"

"Huh? Why…" Zero followed X's gaze down to his ankle. "Oh unholy crap." A dead hand was tightly gripping him. And if one of them could move, then… Zero dashed forward, his Z-saber slashing down and severing the wrist holding X. He quickly grabbed X, yanking him back, and not a moment too soon. The dead bodies shifted and stirred with a sound like wind through dry leaves. Slowly, jerkily, they pulled themselves to their feet.

"What is this, Resident Evil VII?" Dynamo stepped back, repulsed. "I think I'm gonna- OW!" Another spirit went through him, and Dynamo collapsed again, gasping and shuddering. X whirled around and fired at the spark, which disappeared. Then the dead began to move… to either side. They were clearing a path, looking at X, Zero and Dynamo through rotting and cracked eyes. One stepped forward… a young female Reploid, she would have been beautiful when she was alive. Her dirty green eyes looked into X's, and he shuddered faintly as he realized there was something alive in there. Or rather, not alive, but aware and suffering.

"Come," she said, her voice as rusty and corroded as her body. He could just barely understand her. "Come see her. Come."

"See who?" Zero said warily, his beam saber pointed at her. She was indifferent to the danger… which only made sense. The worst had already happened to her. What more could he do?

"She gave us form. She gave us a voice. Come see her," she said. "Come see the Queen." They exchanged glances, and then Dynamo spoke.

"Can I have some promises that nothing will go through me again?" Dynamo had pushed himself to his feet, and he was shivering violently now. The dead woman looked at him, and her expression could charitably have been called a smile. But the bitterness and malice in her eyes was endless.

"We hate you. You work for him. Only that you are not infected keeps you alive. We will not suffer our murderers to live." Her smile grew more terrible, and Dynamo actually looked away. "We are the dead, and our pain has a voice." X took Dynamo's arm, but the mercenary had had enough.

"Sigma can stuff this contract. I'm leaving." Dynamo's expression as he tried to teleport away made the dead Reploid laugh. "You… you bitch! What are you doing?"

"It is easy to enter the land of the dead," she replied. "But not so easy to leave."

"It's alright Dynamo," X said softly to the blue haired mercenary. "We'll get through this." Dynamo looked at X uncertainly, but nodded. He had the feeling that without X's obvious support, he would have been killed a dozen times over by now.

They walked between the lines of dead, not looking left or right, the dead Reploid leading. She took them to a second, cleared courtyard… but one that was different. The ground had somehow been fused into a black surface that looked slick as glass, yet was somehow rough enough that they did not slip when they stepped on it. The buildings surrounding this space had partially melted into a similar substance, and there was a throne in the centre. A woman was slumped in the middle of it, looking like a broken china doll in the midst of the black throne. Her skin was very white, and her hair was flaming red, spilling around her face and flowing in the wind.

The three Hunters slowly stepped forward, and her eyes snapped open. They gleamed green, glowing faintly in the dark. She slowly straightened, and stood. She was wearing a filmy black gown that clung appealingly to her curves. Zero tilted his head to one side, and stepped forward, intrigued. There was something very dangerous about this woman, and to him, that was interesting.

"Hello, beautiful," Zero said with a winning smile. X winced… somehow, that didn't seem at all appropriate, under the circumstances. "What's a lovely lady like you doing in a place like this?" The dead Reploid girl stood silently to one side, as the woman cocked her head to one side.

"I am the focal point for this place," She said softly, her voice sweet and thick as honey. "The Queen of the Dead. What do you want here, Hunters? Mercenary?" She glanced at Dynamo, who shifted nervously under her glittering gaze.

"Erm, well, Sigma sorta wants to know where his patrols have been going?" Dynamo glanced warily over his shoulder, on the lookout for more spirits. The woman tilted her head to one side, then gave a magnificent, one-shoulder shrug, her gown swirling around her.

"This city was murdered by Mavericks, and the shades of their victims far outnumber the Maverick dead," she said, then smiled poisonously. "And those taken against their will by the virus come here angry, as well. This place will never be safe for them. Tell Sigma to leave this place be, and stop wasting his time."

"Sigma might decide to bomb it," X said cautiously. "Maybe even a tactical nuke." Ordinarily, nukes and other large weapons could not get through the defensive screens. But Earthsaver II was in Maverick territory, a dead city, and nothing protected it. But the woman only shrugged again.

"The dead don't care."

"Huh… what's your name, lady?" Zero asked brightly.

"Domina," she purred, stepping closer to him. X and Dynamo watched… this was beginning to feel surreal. Well, more surreal than before. Zero was flirting with the self-proclaimed Queen of the Dead? And unlike many who would claim such a title, she had a lot of evidence to back her up.

"Domina. So, where's Axl?" Zero asked innocently, but her eyes hardened and her smile turned a touch dangerous.

"My master? I'm sure I could not say." She said demurely.

"Your master?" Zero pursued the question, ignoring the warning glitter in her eyes. "What do you mean by that?"

"I think," she said slowly, her voice meltingly sweet. "That you should go elsewhere for your answers, Hunter. Or you might never leave at all." There was a soft, shifting sound behind them. X cautiously looked over his shoulder, and tensed… the dead were there, watching them. And they seemed rather ominous… well, moreso than before. Zero's eyes hardened, and he stepped closer.

"Look, lady, we really need to know. Axl seems to be the only one who knows what's going on, and we need the truth!"

"You can't handle the truth." Domina smiled wryly as they all groaned. Zero had set himself up for that one.

"We still need it, and you're damn well going to tell- FUCK!" Zero tried to leap back as she moved with blinding speed towards him. He activated his beam saber to ward her off but she ignored it-

"Zero, no!" X cried out, then gasped in horror as the woman ran herself ONTO the saber. Then Zero was flying through the air, hitting Dynamo with a tremendous crash, knocking him down. X blinked… had she backhanded Zero with one hand? She was still standing, and X gagged at the smell of cooking flesh. Then he stared as she gripped the beam saber's hilt, and slowly pulled it out of her body. She smiled viciously, as the horrible, gaping wound slowly rebuilt itself before their eyes.

"And how will you make me?" She asked Zero sweetly, as he rolled off Dynamo with some sulfurous swear words. Domina switched off his saber, throwing it back to him before she turned away and walked back to her throne. She seated herself on it, then spoke. "So… tell anyone who cares to know that this place is the Necropolis, and they can come here to speak to the dead. Although they may never leave. And now… GET OUT!" Blue spirit fire suddenly surrounded them, cold as the dead, invading all of them. X managed to scream before he blacked out…


	14. Chapter 14

"Well, that totally sucked." X and Zero were both back at Hunter HQ, trying desperately to get warm. X shivered in his nest of blankets, and sipped a mug of cocoa as Zero spoke. It felt like the chill of the dead had permanently invaded him. Maybe if he took a nap… "That woman was a bitch. I hope Sigma bombs her ass."

"Somehow, I doubt it would make much of a difference." X commented as Zero scowled and gulped his coffee. "Is it just me, or is the world going completely insane?" Zero sighed.

"It's not just you. Remember the look at Signas face when we told him about the ghosts?" X nodded glumly. If it hadn't been for all the other weirdness afflicting the world, Signas would probably have sent them both for checkups and counseling. But all through the world, things were getting really weird. The Hunters had already been called out several times to deal with Mavericks who turned out to be not really Mavericks. X tried in vain to forget about the blob incident. No one was quite sure what it had been, but it had started in a school and devoured several students, a teacher, and severely injured two Hunters before they'd found a weapon that would work on it. Which had involved water guns filled with a solution of salts taken from the chemistry class. One of the students had come up with it. Given the organic nature of the residue, after the monster had shriveled, they doubted it had been Sigma's work. What it had been was open for speculation.

The only real plus side to all the bizarre activity was that, according to their informants, the Mavericks were suffering just as much as anyone else. To everyone's confusion, Sigma had assaulted one of his own facilities to rid it of… something. Or maybe someone. Mavericks didn't seem to be immune to the changing effects many humans and Reploids were experiencing, and X had no idea what effect that would have on the Maverick virus. Although… the fact that the Mavericks were also being targeted made finding an explanation for all the events much harder. There was only one person…

"We need to find Axl." X said, sipping his cocoa. Zero shrugged.

"Alia's on the lookout, and we've got every police force in the country keeping their eyes peeled. We'll find him sooner or later. Hey, I'm starting to feel warmer." Zero said. X nodded… the cocoa was finally thawing the chilly feeling in his guts, too.

"Me too. I hope she finds him soon, though." X wanted an explanation.

* * *

"God, Azak! Can you drive at all?" Axl complained, then gagged as the car jerked to stop so sharply, the cross-body seat strap dug into his neck.

"I said I could drive manual. I didn't say I was good at it. I got the knowledge from Domina, remember?" Azak grumbled, shifting gears. The car suddenly jerked into a higher speed. "There." There was a loud clanking sound, and the car bounced as it hit a bump in the road.

"Ugh. I hate Rent-a-Wreck. Remind me to do something nasty to them." Axl muttered, then winced as Tip landed on his head.

"Curse their urinals with eternal stench?" She suggested brightly, and Axl grinned.

"I would, but I bet it'd be redundant. How about some magical graffiti? Guaranteed not to be wiped off by anything except actual explosives."

"Now you sound like a cheesy commercial." Pip commented, joining Tip on Axl's head. That was a bit too much for him, and he shook them off. They fluttered down onto the dash. "So where exactly are we going again?" Axl grimaced, and pulled out a leather thong he was wearing around his neck.

"Wherever the stone takes us." Tip and Pip both averted their eyes from the item swinging from the cord, and Axl could hardly blame them. As magical creatures, they were even more vulnerable to it then he was.

Anyone watching would have been quite puzzled, though. The stone dangling from the leather necklace looked like nothing more than a faceted crystal. Very nicely faceted into a ball, with perhaps ten sides, it was large and looked expensive, like a rather fine piece of Swarovski crystal. A watcher's puzzlement might have turned to alarm, though, when they gazed inside it. At first, a watcher would catch glimpses of their own past, strange visions and reflections that were sometimes beautiful, sometimes strange, and always entrancing. Eventually, though, they would become aware of something else… something that was looking out at them even as they looked at it. The more sensitive would feel the alien force and terrible malice of that regard. One of Axl's followers had stumbled over the pendant almost by accident, and they had all been horrified that someone would make jewelry that deliberately created a view into a plane of lesser reality.

Axl closed his hand over the pendant, feeling the throb of the seeking spell he had placed on it, and considered the nature of reality. Everyone on Earth lived in a four dimensional universe. But above and below that were other planes of existence. The higher planes had more dimensions, more reality, so when they intruded onto a lower one they could be obscenely dangerous. However, for a higher being to intrude onto a lower plane, it had to suffer with a loss of it's familiar reality. Not many would subject themselves to that. Lower beings, on the other hand, were a different matter. The lower dimensions lacked the reality that made individual life possible, and lacked the most important dimension of the material world… time. They only existed, beneath the radar of the world, like a scummy pond residue. The entities that existed there… not lived, nothing could really live without time… craved the reality that was denied to them, and would try to break through any weak point they could find. They were constantly watching, and hated every living thing, from the tiniest bacteria on up, for having the reality they didn't. That was what made the pendants so dangerous.

And some idiot was making them, which had led Axl to rent a car and start cruising. He'd narrowed down the maker to this city, but something was messing with his detection spell. He'd have to be almost on top of it before the spell signaled-

Axl suddenly felt a warmth in his palm, and a tug. "Here! Pull in here." Azak immediately started shifting gears again, and Axl winced as a car behind them honked. But they managed to pull in without incident.

"A shopping mall?" Tip said dubiously, fluttering up on her milkweed down wings to get a better look. Pip followed, his butterfly wings fluttering energetically.

"A really ugly mall. Are you sure this is it, boss?" Axl grinned at Pip, as Azak looked disgusted. The little faeries were adapting quickly to the modern world, and had taken to calling Axl boss. He really preferred that to being called Master, but many of the others were a bit inflexible on that point.

"Definitely, Pip. And it makes sense… where else would you buy crystal shtick?" That stumped the faeries, who fluttered over onto his shoulders. Axl unbuckled himself, and got out of the car. "Let's see what's going on."

They noticed something before they even made it out of the parking lot.

"Hey, Tip, look at that!"

"What? It's a fake pixie dashboard ornament."

"Look closer."

"…Eww. It's not fake, it's stuffed." Axl blinked and turned to look at that, seeing the gilded and shellacked little pixie hanging from the rearview mirror of a minivan. With its insect wings spread wide, it actually made a very pretty ornament. If you ignored the expression on the tiny face. "That must have hurt."

"Yick." Axl grimaced, shaking his head. Pixies were basically the vermin of the faery world, so the two faeries were only grossed out, not horrified. Still, it was a pretty disgusting way to use a pixie. "Want to bet someone bought that from the same place as the pendant?" Tip and Azak both looked grim, but Pip perked up.

"I wonder what else they got? Ow, hey, no hitting! I hate pixies, okay?" Pip defended himself from Tip, and they both fluttered off Axl's shoulder, attracting a few strange looks from people entering the mall. Or maybe it was Azak. Even in street clothes, the red-eyed giant did tend to stand out. Axl was also in a t-shirt and blue jeans, looking like plenty of other teenage boys. He'd found that with all the people looking for him, hiding in plain sight was sometimes the best tactic. A very minor disguise spell hid the scars on his face.

Walking into the mall, they began a meandering tour of the concourse, getting a feel for the reality of the mall. It still felt solid, pretty much, but there were some intriguing anomalies.

"That doll MUST be magical. Should we mention it to the sales girl?" Axl murmured to Azak, who looked over with a frown. The porcelain doll in question was in the display case of a shop devoted to the Dalton porcelain company, but it surely hadn't been made by it. With their mystical abilities, Azak and the faeries easily penetrated the glamour that was supposed to make it go unnoticed.

"Is that really a porcelain figure of a dirty old man wearing a raincoat?" Azak finally asked after a few minutes of steady regard. Tip and Pip both giggled, heartily amused.

"Looks like. Eh, forget about it." Axl turned away, shaking his head. Someone else could deal with it, if they cared to.

Eventually, they found the shop they were looking for.

"Very kitschy." Axl said, looking over the merchandise. "If you ignore all the spells." Someone had obviously got ahold of a pretty expansive repertoire, and was using it to make money. Probably quite a lot of money. The girl at the cash register was watching them with a frown. Axl ignored her, and with a wave of his hand, triggered almost a half dozen spells. Her mouth fell open when all the little frogs in the display started to dance and sing. Alas, they were singing several different songs. The resulting cacophony made everyone wince.

"How did you do that? You've got to say the right word." She said accusingly, and Axl tilted his head.

"You mean the magic word?" He said disingenuously, smiling at her.

"No, dumbass." Axl blinked… that was a new approach to customer service. "The word that triggers the voice receptors, duh."

"Oh." Axl restrained himself from rolling his eyes, although it was hard. He could see where this was going. In a time of high technology, that was what people believed in. It was really outright impossible to make little, animated frog robots… the way they danced, jumping, really would require robotics… fit them with vocal receptors, and sell them for… Axl checked the price. Twenty bucks. Yeah, right. Of course, maybe he shouldn't complain. The only reason Tip and Pip could go around in public was the exact same blindness. Most people assumed they were robots.

"Stop playing with those stupid things, boss! I've got the big stuff back here." Pip flew back from where he had been investigating the back of the store. Azak set down a pewter skull goblet, and followed as Axl walked towards the faeries.

They had indeed found what they were looking for. Hanging up in a display of jewelry were dozens of the pendants, with different color crystals. Axl picked one up, staring into it intently for a moment then dropping it with a shudder. It was definitely like the one he already had.

"Is the owner in?" Axl asked the salesgirl politely. She scowled at him.

"If you need something, I can help you." She said stubbornly, and Axl held up his crystal.

"I just want to ask him a few questions about this, if you could get him for me." Azak lent weight to Axl's request by leaning against the counter and smiling at her. Human face or not, his teeth were still distinctly trollish, and the girl paled before scowling and stalking off. Axl could almost read her thoughts… a very loud, 'I'm not getting paid enough for this.'

The human man who came out a moment later made Axl's guns itch. He'd hoped the person making and selling the pendants would turn out to be just an innocent idiot, but it was clear his hopes were not answered. This moon faced, middle-aged man almost radiated decay to Axl's senses. Well, his magical senses. Tip and Pip both fluttered back, very uncomfortable, and alighted on a fragile display of ceramic castles. Axl took a deep breath, and glanced at Azak. The presence of the huge troll hybrid was reassuring.

"Can I help you?" The man asked with a smile, proving that whatever abilities he'd been gifted with, aura sensing was not one of them. Axl gave him a pleasant smile, although he desperately wanted to just shoot him in the heart. But since no one else could sense what he could, that would be difficult to explain, although it might be inevitable.

"After a fashion." Axl held out his pendant, and met the owners eyes in a level stare. "This is very cute. But don't you think it's a touch foolish? Once they get through, they won't have any use for you." The smile drained off the mans face, until the look he was giving Axl was completely blank.

"I don't know what you're talking about." Axl's eyes narrowed at that quiet reply, and with a flick of power and a mental command, the stone in his hand crumpled to dust. Tip and Pip fluttered off their perch, landing on Axl's shoulders, and the man's eyes flickered to them then back to Axl. The salesgirl was standing behind him, interested in the conversation.

"You know exactly what I'm talking about," Axl said, just as quietly… but with a definite undertone of threat. "And who your masters are. This stops now, understand?" The man regarded him for a moment, then bobbed his head with a smile.

"Boss? Should I call the cops?" The salesgirl said nervously. The man shook his head, turning towards her.

"I think we can handle this without their help, Kimberly," he said mildly, and Axl suddenly drew his gun as he caught the glitter of a knife in his hand. But that was the wrong reaction, because the shop owner wasn't going for him… he sliced open the salesgirl's neck in one smooth move. Her mouth opened in an 'o' of surprise, and she gripped the spurting wound as she crumpled to the ground. Axl shot the man, without remorse, wincing slightly at the smell of burnt meat and less savory things.

Then everything went to hell.

* * *

_X, Zero, we're picking up a massive energy reading in Calgary. The co-ordinates are…_ X listened intently as Alia gave them the co-ordinates. _There are police on site, and they have spotted Axl._

"Really? That's great! What else have they said about the situation?"

_Ah… nothing intelligible. The reports don't agree on anything except Axl's presence and the fact that there have been several deaths. The police are urgently requesting assistance._

"We'll be right there." Zero cut in, and teleported out. X followed a second later.

"Did we get the right place?" X looked around dubiously. They were in the food court of the mall, and while it was strangely deserted, there didn't seem to be any mayhem or strange events going on.

"Hmm." Zero stole a drumstick from someone's abandoned KFC meal, and munched as he purposefully left the food court. "It's noon on a Saturday, X, and the food court's empty. This is the right place. I bet the trouble's just moved along with the people." They both heard the crack of several pistols, the whine of a laser rifle, and the staccato firing of Axl's guns. "Ahh, this way!" They both heard a familiar scream, and dashed towards it.

When they reached the trouble, it was going full swing. Something that looked like a giant squid was half in, half out of the pet store. It had Axl's feet wrapped up in one tentacle, and was swinging him around in a random way. A huge man with bright red eyes, black and blue armor and a giant axe tried to chop off the tentacle, and narrowly missed decapitating his friend. Then the squid managed to swing Axl back and use him to club the man, who went down hard. A police officer fired a shot at the monster, but it didn't seem to do much good.

"If this weren't so serious, I'd say we should get pictures." Zero dashed forward, and tried to severe the tentacle with his beam saber… and nearly got clubbed with Axl. "Woah! This thing is faster than it looks- AUGH!" Two tentacles managed to grab his legs, and tried to hoist him up… then recoiled as he slashed one apart with his beam saber. "Ha! Take tha- OW!" The second tentacle dropped him unceremoniously to the floor, and X fired a shot into the creature, which made a high pitched squealing sound and threw Axl at a surprised X. Axl hit with a stupendous crash, knocking them both to the ground. X managed to sit up, wincing, the spiky haired kid in his arms… Axl was limp, sick and dizzy from his ordeal.

"I'm never going to eat calamari again as long as I live…" Axl said groggily, then squinted at X. "X? What are you doing here?"

"We've been watching for you, Axl," X said gently, smoothing back Axl's hair. He was in his armor, but he'd lost his helmet somewhere… probably from being tossed around and used like a piñata. "And no one could miss the commotion here."

"Oh… right." Axl turned to watch the fight in progress. Zero and Azak were getting the upper hand over the squid beast, chopping and slashing. Axl relaxed, settling against X… his guns hadn't worked well anyway, and he was feeling a bit too nauseous to start searching through his DNA archives for something that would work, when his friends had the situation well in hand. X was willing to leave it to Zero, as well, so he could use the opportunity to talk to Axl.

"Axl, when we're done with that thing you HAVE to come back to HQ with us." X said in a firm, no-nonsense tone of voice. "We need to know what's going on." Axl looked up at him wide eyed, but for a reason X wasn't expecting.

"When the squid is dead? But there are a whole bunch more, X!" X stared at Axl, his heart sinking.

"What do you mean? More squid things?" Considering how much of a pain it was to kill, that was the last thing he wanted to hear. But Axl shook his head.

"Not squids. The asshole who started all this seeded weird things through the whole mall. Some are trapped in stores like the squid, and some are roving around. We were going to hit the Body Shop next."

"What's in the Body Shop?" X asked, although he was pretty sure he didn't want to know. Axl shrugged.

"We don't know, but when the police tried to get in it threw body parts at them. Human and Reploid, both." X blanched. Body shop… body parts…

"Axl, that's… that's _twisted_."

"Tell me about it!" Axl pushed himself to his feet with a sigh. "This whole thing is twisted. And I can't use magic at ALL or I'll only make things worse." The strain current events were placing on reality was almost intolerable. Axl was betting that the powers in the lower dimensions were hoping to incite him into using his magic so they could break in. Being a powerful wizard-lord wasn't much use when you couldn't use it at all. But then, that was why he had DNA copying.

"Magic?" X questioned, then shook his head. "Nevermind, let's discuss it later. I think they're done with the squid." The pet store was covered in purple goo, and so were Zero and Azak. Azak had come up with the idea of rinsing off in the mall fountain, and Zero had decided it was a grand notion. They were discussing something as they washed. "Let's go." X helped Axl up, and he wavered, but managed to stay upright.

"Boss!" X's eyes widened as a… faerie…? Fluttered down from the upper level and landed on Axl's shoulder. "All the plushies from the toy store are rampaging through the Bay! They've got a bunch of people trapped in the furniture section!"

"Oh… blast." Axl looked over at the escalator, weighing priorities. Whatever was in the Body Shop was probably a lot deadlier than plushies. On the other hand, there was no one trapped in the Body Shop… no one alive, anyway. "Okay, to the Bay!" Axl dashed up the escalator, with X close behind and Zero and Azak belatedly following.

They had people to save.


End file.
